Prefabrication experiments - 243 - measuring devices - 04 - ISO standard 1791

Building, dimensioning and measuring are inseparable concepts. These principles relate philosophies that define the scale and methods for mooring an edifice to its site and harmonize a structure’s heterogeneous components or systems. In classic architecture, ancient numerical rules for measuring progressed from generation to generation. Rules of thumb based on empirical material knowledge, height to width and breadth ratios for columns, arches, and building proportions were established through trial and error or precedents. Industrialization’s specialized production techniques implied and sustained a radical change in architectural composition. With the standardization of design and engineering came the dimensional regulation of the building process expressed by the assembly of dimensionally coordinated manufactured parts. The master builder evolved into the master arranger.

As the diversified mass-production of building components and materials exploded, ordering principles were famously studied by Bemis (USA, 1930s), Neufert (Germany, 1930s), Bergual (Sweden, 1940s). The resulting theme of dimensional coordination was idealized to simplify the harmonic relationships between components, pieces and systems from design to fabrication and to on-site assembly. The ideas set out by these pioneers varied little and all argued for a unit-to-whole factorization and integration. The International Modular Group formed in the 1960s continued this work and preceded the ISO 1791standard developed by the International Organization for Standardization’s Technical Committee ISO/TC 59, Building Construction.

The first edition (1973) and second edition (1983) determined the basic elements and vocabulary for stakeholders to collaborate and coordinate varied elements into a «singular whole». The definition of dimensional coordination provided in the standard is «a convention on related sizes for the coordinating dimensions of building components and the buildings incorporating them, for their design, manufacture and assembly». This characterization articulates a vision of a building community that openly shares information and component tolerances for joints and assemblies. Since Bemis’ 4-inch-cube rule, dimensional coordination posited the open sharing of measuring grids and production methods to articulate a varied architecture from matchable parts. Today’s digital conceptualization and fabrication are laying fertile groundwork for the virtual assembly of data-informed parts, including sizes and tolerances, setting the stage for a new generation of numeric principles to determine and share a new language for generating buildings.  

Principles of dimensional coordination from Modular Drafting Manual: A Guide to the Application of Modular

Coordination in Design

Kent, S. R. (1961)

   

Prefabrication experiments - 242 - measuring devices - 03 - Proportioning flexibility : Yona Friedman's Movable Boxes

Digital technology applied in design and fabrication is shaping a revolution in construction methods. Also driven by stagnating productivity and progressing agendas for sustainability, prefabrication, off-site construction and industrialized building are being federated with data manipulation design tools to address long-standing prefab stigmas: repetition and inflexibility. Within this paradigm, system modularity is proposed as a type of pattern language to inform customization potentials.

Connecting customization with modularity is not new, transcends digital technology and relates industrialization’s mass production principles with diversifying its business model to adapt supply to consumers’ demands. Modernity in architecture replaced classical proportioning measurements with production criteria and material grids to define open systems, which predate digital mass customization and celebrated modularity as the basis for individualization. Many such proposals identified a set of rules, based on open planning, employing the modular grid as a type of chess board onto which many strategies could be developed according to predefined pieces.  These modular tessellations used another of modernity’s tenets: the plan libre (free plan) liberated from bearing walls, as Le Corbusier posited in the DOM-INO system, emancipated the user and architecture from classical and structural constraints. 

Inspired by these concepts Yona Friedman, best known for his megastructure cities and adaptable urban environments proposed a modular housing unit in 1949, the Movable boxes. More of a system than a unit, aligned party walls determined a basic row-house type from the multiplication and juxtaposition of equally distanced partitions. Within this basic shell, front and back walls could be user-defined. Living spaces were specified according to a linear one-meter (estimated from drawings) modular grid system perpendicular to the dividing walls. Onto this regulated field, predetermined service cores or boxes «movable boxes» would be placed, affixed and deployed according to evolving user needs. The service space boxes for kitchens, closets and bathrooms define open served spaces without predetermined functions easily modified from living to sleeping or working spaces. Foreshadowing Habraken’s supports and infill, Friedman’s basic dwelling shell with individualized infill patterns was elaborated as sharable design process where each box unit provided a basic measuring device to create, figure out and customize dwelling patterns. 

Movable Boxes from «Yona Friedman.com»

Prefabrication experiments - 241 - measuring devices - 02 - Rudolph Schindler's modular design matrix

Modularity is a cardinal axiom of Japanese traditional dwellings. Both for framing and spatial organization, the ken (1:1) and the tatami mat (1:2) outline basic compositional rules and ratios for component compatibility and the coherent sharing of knowledge among master builders. The inspiring force of traditional Japanese grids and geometries on modern architecture fostered a new formal and spatial lexicon while affirming the rejection of more euro-centric doctrines.

Composing and regulating architecture through rational proportioning units or frameworks is arguably the legacy of Japanese architecture conveyed by the modern architect. For iconic modernists, Neutra, Wright, Le Corbusier, Eames, the didactic use of production geometries entrenched these traditions in a clearly new industrial language. Rudolph Schindler’s role in advancing these theories in the United States, in California in particular, is well documented. His obsessive use of grids and measurements has recently been the object of scholarly study. An article by Jin-Ho Park published in Nexus Network Journal vol. 5 no. 2 (Autumn 2003) explores and studies Schindler’s grid geometry.

Particularly in two projects (the Monolith Homes and the Schindler Shelters) the use of a five-foot or four-foot organizing unit circumscribes the rational use of materials for defining spaces and their formulated juxtaposition. The grid and its subsequent regular fractioning employed as a drawing underlay, relates dwelling elements in all three dimensions. Conceptually, the grid is a perceptual planning device. The designer develops spaces according to his understanding of the grid’s scale. Further the grid also connects architecture with manufacturing criteria streamlining design, manufacturing and building stakeholders. Identifying each grid axis by numbers and letters facilitates communication for localizing, situating and positioning elements. Maintaining a recognizable set of dividing principles is a key to creating this potential. Plan dimensions can be read through simple use of grids and graphic scales.

The Monolith homes (1919) actually designed by Schindler while working for Frank Lloyd Wright and the Schindler Shelters (1933) are the clear manifestation of the grid as a modern design order. Based on similar components, spatial dimensions and architectural planning elements, this seriality, a type of pattern language, established a strain of architectural projects devised through similar organizing principles illustrating the basis of a scalable geometric language.

Schindler Shelters rendering

Prefabrication experiments - 240 - measuring devices - 01 - Regulating Lines

Systems of weights and measures are one of the oldest social constructs. Emerging from a need to ensure fair exchange, barter and later commerce, rules for equitable measurements are as essential as language. Clear methods for measuring, sharing, rationing and proportioning are not specific to architecture, construction or prefabrication, however, measurement systems in these fields emblematically relate to anchoring, setting and positioning edifices in relation to their context and constituting parts. Measurement systems in architecture connect and recount acquiesced methods for defining and circumscribing space and limits. Shared rules for proportioning facilitate calculations and normalize communication, coordination and collaboration between project stakeholders. 

Modularity in architecture and building systems is ground zero for this scaling, combining and characterizing simple formulae for multiplying, dividing, adding or subtracting systematically to retain constant and coherent measurements. The module or the smallest unit of measure which connects the unit to the whole is clearly expressed in brick and mortar construction. The modular brick can be multiplied and stacked in variable ways while retaining the proportioning system of the single unit. Measured horizontally or vertically, the entire building dimension will be a factor of the brick’s elemental size. It becomes the regulating line for the building. 

These theories of systemic coordination are still the basis of harmonic detailing in architecture. Used interchangeably, proportions, modules, grid systems, generative geometry, or regulating lines, these themes will be explored in the next ten blog posts. Particular attention will be placed on dimensional coordination and its relationship to modernizing architecture and generating prefabrication theory more specifically. While not limited to prefabrication, coherent and synchronized gauging systems are a requirement for manufacturing as this dimensional regularly makes it possible to define repetitive manufacturing processes, control their inputs or outputs and easily define assembly constants. A prime example of this normalization is the single-wide manufactured house.  Transport criteria determined both interior and exterior dimensions and is a factor for overall building dimensions, when single-wides are juxtaposed or stacked, as the unitary brick is in masonry construction. Prefabrication, at its most basic level is, like architecture, a function of shared geometric principles to make computations simpler by allowing pieces and parts of buildings to be interchangeable and compatible. 

Bemis' modular coordination principles