Prefabrication experiments - 303 - Then and now - 03 - The mobile home

The dream of industrializing house construction is at least as old as the motivation that led to the automobile’s invention from horse-drawn carts. An aspiration and narrative carried by industrialists, builders and architects has been the subject of many publications and exhibitions. In 1951, Burnham Kelley published one of the most extensive inventories and complete encyclopedic works on the topic. Even with all its celebrated potential for lowering costs and increasing efficiencies, the industrialized house remained marginally applied save for one segment, which has become its emblem. The trailer coach or the mobile home now referred to as a manufactured house is constructed on a mobile chassis, completed in a factory ready to be delivered and placed on any site. This sector represents 6.4% of the total real estate stock in the United States with an average production of approximately 100,000 units per year. Benefiting from the HUD code released in 1974, the factory-built home has endeavored to shed the suspect construction connotations that haunted the sector since the 1950s. HUD’s endorsement certainly helped the mobile home’s successful commercialization. 

 

Evolving from simple 8-foot-wide self-built trailers to Elmer Frey's «tenwydes», double-wides and eventually to stacking premade units to create multi-unit buildings, the mobile home combined all dwelling functions into a uniquely integrated house - machine including the advantages of simplified ownership and relocatability. Today, the financial crisis of the early 2000s, environmental imperatives and the individualization of lifestyles underscore a quest for a simplified and ecological existence, untethered by mortgages and permanent dwellings. The «architectural» mobile home inspired by the "tiny house" or micro house movement fills the pages of design magazines or websites and provides an opportunity for architects to renew their interest in homes as products, part and parcel of globalized and connected culture. The Alpod designed by Cybertecture with Arup exemplifies the commodification of the mobile home no longer identified as a subpar dwelling system but as a smart - connected product. The home designed as an intelligent connected device brings us full circle in the application of the factory-made house as an object that bridges the fields of architecture and manufacturing.

Comparative analysis pre[FABRICAT]ions

Prefabrication experiments - 302 - Then and Now - 02 - industrialized components

Mechanization applied to Onsite building reformed construction; its major implication was the development of an innumerable variety of elements, pieces, components, and products, rapidly, affordably, and according to rigorous dimensional parameters. These products were cataloged for every use and illustrated in trade journals that shifted architectural design from artisan-based decisions to an informed «bricolage» of cataloged and mass-produced parts. A quick look at the FW Dodge Sweets Catalog (1909-) published as the classifying system for the industry in North America offers a glimpse into a normalized systemic relationship between the factory and the design process.  Replaced today by on-line editions, the Sweets catalogues were a staple of architectural design firms’ libraries. Component interoperability, another tenet of industrialization, outlined modular coordination and systemic classification of building design methodology. 

 

The mass production of objects or parts diversified even further into the supply of many different options from basic components. Textures, profiles, adjustable shapes or colors, pieces could be molded, rolled or embossed with differentiated mechanical and automated continuity. Further, batch production made it possible to mass produce series of particularized elements if the quantity justified the development of a specific die or mold.  

 

Frank Lloyd Wright's “textile blocks” carry this heritage as the same basic interlocking masonry unit was molded, repeated but diversified by replacing the its facing. The design of a singular surface from a mass-produced block became the symbol of multiple iconic Wright houses.   Today’s manufacturing potentials further enhance this customization potential. Wright's textile blocks' lots were contingent to quantity, however digital fabrication tools simplify the onerous development of dies for molds and introduce the idea of a reduced series from a printed or digitally produced form. Emerging Objects’ Quake Column, part of a similar tradition of interlocking ashlar inspired stonework illustrates this new direction where architects invent intelligent and specifically designed components and even define the instructions for their use. Where the textile block required a dimensional standardization according to a normalized mold, the 3d printing technique used by Emerging Objects removes the pattern mold from the process by producing completely customized interlocking parts. 

Comparative analysis of Textile Blocks and Quake Column