Prefabrication experiments - 278 - fabricating worlds - 09 - The Walking House

Mechanization generated many new systems, materials and methods in architecture. From modernism to high-tech architecture, the systemic use of technology as a response to any problem or the representation of newness expressed by the machine aesthetic underlined industrial manifestations in architectural design. Machines and devices became part of design’s theorisation of utopias or dystopias. Archigram's walking city is the case and point of architecture becoming a machine capable of constructing, developing and displacing cities; a depiction of technology taking over urbanity. This vision of an a-contextual architecture where a machine could build or rebuild a globalized habitat in any setting challenged the regional vision of architecture and the classic canon of architecture relating to its site as the fundamental aspect of its composition.  Mechanisms for dwelling were imagined in exigent times, reacting to the second world war, the cold war and the arm's race with the invention of the H bomb. Machines would help control climate and environments in a potentially inhospitable war-torn planet. 

 

Today's challenges while equally geopolitical and certainly increasingly environmental are the focal point of extensive exploration in the area of moveable dwellings; being able to set up house anywhere and self-sufficiently are two themes that are driving this research. The Walking House (2009) designed by N55 combines the microdwelling with a reaffirmation that mechanisation of architecture could lead to moveable housing and that technology could make this type of dwelling sustainable. The walking house is a mobile unit: an octahedron or hexagonal based prism placed on one of its surfaces and lifted off the ground by steel trusses made up of six spider like steel hydraulic limbs that propel the volume forward at a maximum speed of 1 meter per minute. The basic structure is made of timber panels. The unit harvests solar and wind energy and has the potential to collect rain-water. A wood burning stove and composting toilet complete the modules basic living systems. The Walking House, like Archigram's walking, city is not dependent on the existence of a collective infrastructure or network but can move around according to its inhabitant’s nomadic lifestyle over any type of field or earthwork. 

The Walking House by N55

Prefabrication experiments - 277 - fabricating worlds - 08 - Building on Mars

 

The race for space in the twentieth century accelerated the development of new technologies and materials. In architecture, the space race inspired prospective visions and construction systems conceived to colonize and terraform unforgiving climates and remote settings. The use of plastics, carbon fibres, powerful adhesives informed by advances in chemistry and military use, became iconically applied in architectural experiments and in futuristic capsule or pod aesthetics pushed by groups like the Japanese metabolists, Archigram and Future Systems. The race for space with its extraterrestrial imagery and narratives influenced a generation of architects to explore speculative forms, geometries and their application. Today another race is taking shape, the race for interplanetary exploration. Determined by new potentials in artificial intelligence driving both digital tools and processes, machines like rover explorers can be deployed equipped to explore and eventually build with little manpower. 

 

Outer space construction was recently explored in a design and process competition organized by NASA. Two finalists were awarded 700 000 US$ to conceive building systems for an eventual Mars colony.  AI Spacefactory, one of the finalists, promotes itself as a technological integrator that explores autonomous robots and leverages sustainable materials to build in any context or setting. Their proposal for NASA, the Mars Habitat «Marsha» combined additive manufacturing with composite materials to imagine a vertical oblong curved hive analogous to early brick firing kilns. This idealized compressive geometry relates to the material properties, which closely mimic concrete - high compressive strength.  The material invention is a hybrid fluid material that hardens once cured. A mixture of basalt (pulverized volcanic rock) and polymers (PLA) generates a hardened substance lighter than regular concrete and that can theoretically be locally sourced. Basalt concrete is not entirely new. Roman engineers employed pozzolanic volcanic ash to create a very durable concrete, water proof and resistant to freeze thaw cycles. The structural concept is a double-shell wall using an egg-like shape. The double skin's exterior layer insulates the interior shell and spaces from harsh exterior environments and extreme temperatures. The separation of the exterior bowed wall from the interior also frees the interior to be developed and arranged according to individualized needs and wants.

AI Spacefactory's proposal

Prefabrication experiments - 276 - fabricating worlds - 07 - research stations

 

The remotely located research station as a building type has charted many interesting strategies for transportable and designed for assembly kits. Colonization advanced «high modernism» as an approach to building in unknown territories. Designing components and systems for delivery, assembly and durability in harsh and unforgiving environments imposes a separation from conventional onsite building methods. Buckminster Fuller’s Radomes, icons of the arctic North American defense DEW Line, were produced as a complete kit of parts from the south and erected over the frozen landscape. In industrial production, Misawa’s Antarctic research station shows in a similar way, how designing for isolation can stimulate innovation. The Japanese company developed a prototype for an easy to transport and construct structure. The research station demands a comprehensive strategy to determine every aspect of a building’s construction. From its earthworks to its mechanical systems, every element and subassembly must fit into an overall sequence as onsite construction in remote locations is unforgiving; it is impossible to adjust, locate or reproduce any missing pieces onsite. 

 

Broghton Architect’s Halley Vi research station in Antarctica inaugurated in 2013 epitomizes the architectural experiment for an unpredictable environment. Built as a series of integrated functional volumetric modules, 180 meters in length, the string of research spaces is composed as a linear wall perpendicular to prevailing winds, which allows snow to drift under the elevated structure. Each module responds to a particular function. Divided in two, each half of the enfilade has its own power plant and could be used as emergency power in case of damage to one side of the structure. A bridge between the two halves could also quarantine each section in response to a particular shut down or glitch. The entire station is supported by telescopic ski foundations that can glide over the icy landscape and shift up or down vertically according to snow depths and climate conditions. As the ice shelf melts, the whole station can be pulled further inland. An insulated laminated composite GRP (glass fibre reinforced plastic) panel,  a construction method associated with unforgiving climates, wraps the steel structure limiting any thermal bridging.  The reticulated substructure supporting the modules and transferring loads to the skis is also entirely insulated from the interior spaces in a type of double skin configuration.

left: Radome, middle: Misawa research station, right: Halley Vi 

 

Prefabrication experiments - 275 - fabricating worlds - 06 - From Midget house to Green house

Reinventing housing often comes in response to crises. The episodes following wars, natural disasters or political turmoil drive demand for rebuilding and for dwellings that are affordable and quick to build. Industrialisation made it possible to reimagine housing production specifically in difficult times applying the mass production model successfully applied to commodities toward architecture. A prime example was the massive investment in industrial development in Japan after the second World War creating a type of prefect storm for a country whose vernacular already included modularity and standardized components. Many prefab house producers were established during this period including the iconic Daiwa. Nubuo Ishibashi founded Daiwa Housing Industry, or the Daiwa House Group today, in the early 1950s to produce affordable dwellings on a massive scale. The Pipe house in response to a destructive Typhoon in the region of Kansai and later the Midget house in response to the baby boom helped the company become one of the most famous and prolific house producers in the history of prefabricated houses in Japan and beyond.

 

Today the company remains well known in its field and has expanded to include all areas of housing production and continues to promote an ideal of resilience in their housing systems development. In response to another global challenge, the demand for fresh produce, the company has allied their knowledge for housing with novel agro-production techniques to create the Agri-cube, a compact 5m x 2.5m volume-unit. The marketing pitch: the cube fits in a regular sized parking spot. In lieu of a polluting vehicle, the spot is transformed into a fresh-produce making device. According to the company the hydroponic greenhouse can yield 10 000 servings of fresh food per year. Delivered as a turnkey product, the Agri-cube requires little maintenance for its lighting and hydroponic mechanical distribution. Constructed on a steel chassis frame, the floor, wall and roof panels are insulated. The cube can be moored to a simple granular foundation requiring minimal site work for infrastructure hook-ups, plumbing and other services. Completely self-contained with solar panels, the Agri-cube placed over a parking spot could transform any strip mall lot into large-scale urban agriculture production.

Midget House (left) Agri-cube (right)

Prefabrication experiments - 274 - fabricating worlds - 05 - Reforming modernism

The first half of the twentieth century could be characterized by partnerships between architects and industry fostering new materials and mass production to conceive affordable housing. As the century progressed, architects worked with a drastically different modus operandi using industry to develop representations, either utopian or dystopian. In both cases the paper trail is both rich and inspiring. The space race, concern over latent nuclear war, the overwhelming rise of economic emancipation in industrialized countries nourished architects’ speculation on how social and political developments would influence housing and architecture. Bubble houses, the promotion of plastics, Archigrams collage comic book representations or even Lebeus Wood's dystopian visions, drawings and speculative representations became the expression of a generation, a type of guidebook for living in future cities dominated by technology. 

 

These original and creative visions had little to do with pre-World War II modernist architects who, in a way, saw functionalism as a tool for developing a new way forward for architecture. The 1960s, 1970s, and 80s were reactionary years. Architects attempted to shed the abstract purity and whiteness of modernism while endeavoring to reconnect and rebrand architects as city builders. The metabolist movement in Japan that harvested and synchronized industrial developments with representation became ground zero for this type of architectural propaganda.

 

Future Systems founded by radical Czech architect Jan Kaplický explored this type of speculative architecture. The firm’s system-based architecture integrated highly sophisticated materials with mechanical means to produce what has become known as High Modernism. After stints with offices like Renzo Piano and Norman Foster, Kaplický defined his personal take by designing conceptual schemes that reformed architectural theorems of context and composition by juxtaposing mechanics, aerodynamics with  industrial design requirements like ergonomics, prototyping, and mobility. The Peanut Project 124 is a prime example of the combination of machines with the micro living spaces made famous by Japanese prototypes like the Kurokawa’s capsule tower.  The speculative nature of Kaplicky's architecture symbolizes at once the canyon that had developed between everyday practice and architectural theory and the conceptual distance that architects had taken from more conventional manufactured architecture and its representation.

Future System's Peanut Project