Prefabrication experiments - 266 - Connectors - 07 - Hauserman's moveable partitions

Modernism and its manufacturing advances pointed to facilitating assembly as a definite way of increasing productivity in building construction. The specification of identifiable elemental layers and systems also simplified procurement, management and on-site component sequencing. Construction was reformed into Taylor(ed) and streamlined tasks by manufacturing dimensionally stable and coordinated elements and pieces. Merging design for assembly with idealized mass production reduced the need for specialized labour onsite. Modernity also implied new functions, utilities and mechanical devices increasing building complexity making it important to normalize construction strategies. 

Further, with the advancement in the service economy, flexibility, mobility and adaptability in spatial organisation became a prerequisite for every building type from office to commercial spaces. Designing for assembly with coordinated systems implied that disassembly would also be possible, making it conceivable to organise and reorganise office arrangements multiple times during a building’s service life; The era of the open plan office space with moveable partitions was born. 

 

In 1913, inventor, industrialist, E.F. Hauserman acquired a material supplies company. He began contracting interior steel framed partitions and expanded in other markets because of major wartime defense contracts. The company’s well-known products were part of Ezra Ehrenkrantz’s school construction system in the late 1960s. The systemic separation and independence of movable partitions and parts made them ideal for schools’ design flexibility and adaptability at the heart of Ehrenkrantz’s philosophy. The partitions invented for the school construction system combined a cold-formed steel stud profiled with diamond shaped connectors on either side onto which variable panels could be clicked and friction clamped in place. The vertical studs were clipped in the same way onto ceiling and floor tracks. Telescoping sections included on the stud’s extremities allotted for structural deflection and ensured independence of the partition’s support system. The panels could be sheathed in any material from simple gypsum board for acoustical applications, chalkboard or corkboard for interactive partitions. The patented vertical stud symbolizes the type of dry construction methods that modernity assimilated from automobile and other commodity production.  Partition Systems such as DIRTT in the lineage of Hauserman’s developments are common in today’s marketplace and have become suitable for any type of interior partition system that requires many changes over time. 

Clipping stud connector