Prefabrication experiments - 308 - Then and now - 08 - Do it yourself systems

Throughout history, building houses was a social act deploying collective methods, knowledge and patterns from generation to generation.  Construction know-how was not exclusive to specific trades or classes. Fishermen, farmers and artisans, all built their own dwellings as their ancestors had before them. Before mechanization and mass production, building one's own home provided the satisfaction of defining, limiting, circumscribing a place and protecting the family unit against climate or predators. 

 

As a reaction to the hyper-specialization of trades and the mass production of dwellings engendered by industrialisation, the late 1950s and 1960s saw the emergence of a do-it-yourself movement. Magazines and instructional journals for making a wide range of items became central to this and fuelled an interest in systems that made it possible to be the central figure in the construction of one's own dwelling. Sharing simplified instructions, lists of tools or devices, materials and precise illustrations turned any able-handed person into a master-builder. A-frames, domes, box frames and platform frames were all offered in pre-cut formats including the required hardware to simplify erecting a home with family and a few friends. Walter Segal’s self-build method is an iconic elucidation of a simple timber frame structure though a type of recipe handbook providing technical details as well as arguing for making building a social process.

 

Built on the legacy of pattern, type and instruction literature, the recent homesteading, cottage core interest is linked to a similar need to interact with one's environment and setting responding not to industrialization but to our totally connected surroundings.  As was the case for Walter Segal's more low-tech approach, Wikihouse by Alistair Parvin leverages the affordability of modeling software and digital manufacturing to pave the way for a new generation to construct their home from an open-source kit. Exemplifying the hacker / maker culture applied to a type of architectural meta-design, Wikihouse's CNC production bridges the gap between ability and competence. Both projects in their own way are based on communicating building knowledge and social iteration. Further, specifically for Wikihouse or projects like it, today’s potential crowd enhancement through globalized communication elevates the potential for do-it-yourself to benefit from a limitless social improvement. 

comparative process analysis

Prefabrication experiments - 307 - Then and now - 07 - Ready mades

Prefabrication is a straightforward concept describing making parts and components in advance of their use to construct edifices. This notion is at least as deep-rooted as construction or architecture. Nomadic hunters, Japanese master-carpenters, Roman master-builders, and medieval cathedral stone cutters prepared elements to ensure intelligibility and easy assembly.  Since industrialization, prefabrication has often been used inaccurately as a synonym for mass produced architecture. The pre-made component is not necessarily mass produced or even factory produced, it is simply a unit or element ready for use. This «ready-made» methodology also intimates using, reusing or repurposing objects. The assembly of housing from train cars studied by Bertrand Goldberg, the stacking of ready-made shipping containers, or the construction of earth ships from recycled tires all speak to this type of «ready-made» strategy; Architecture cobbled together with these components, subassemblies, or pieces is the basis of a more frugal way of approaching design and construction. The use of ready-made objects or even the objet trouvé transferred from its original use to dwelling underlines a sensibility usually associated with vernacular construction. Bottles, tires, or concrete infrastructure pipes can be stacked, juxtaposed, aligned, into a dense framework creating walls, inhabitable hives or any inhabitable device.   

 

Another architectural option in the «ready-made» realm is to design an object shape or space that is the key unit of a modular building system; a type of predetermined large chunk of a building. Guy Dessauges living tubes from concrete cylinders demonstrates this specific type of ready to use component system. Concrete tubes cast orthogonally on one end and obliquely on the other become the basic shapes stacked and attached to a vertical service core on their straight end and open to the environment on their oblique end. Similarly shipping containers continuously inspire box-type construction from ready mades. The Plug-in school from People's Architecture Office uses this basic idea to design a scalable system from interchangeable volumetric units that are designed to work and connect like containers. Inspired by the simple corrugated shell construction or concrete shell both proposals imply a type of batch production of elements that can then be assembled in a variety of compositions depending on function, span, scope or context. 

comparative analysis by pre[FABRICA]tions

Prefabrication experiments - 306 - Then and now - 06 - Megastructures

 

The Second World War devastated many cities and countries. The war effort also delayed housing construction and expended resources both human and material. The acute need for housing that followed was an accumulation of prewar and wartime shortages. The postwar baby boom also increased demand for affordable housing as well as every other type of social service edifice from schools to hospitals. Governments invested massively in redirecting military-industrial complexes toward housing to improve production capacity and maintain power in the event of future conflicts.  

 

Japan was particularly affected and invested heavily in the development of technologies for the housing industry. Influenced by architectural modernity, vertical, collective housing became a focus of rebuilding. Industrialization with an important emphasis on automation introduced new ways of making things and eventually led to the Toyota Production System, equally as disruptive as Henry Ford's model had been in early 20th century USA. The Japanese prefabricated housing industry evolved in this context and inspired the stacking of manufactured units onto vertical support structures. These open structures, analogous to a mega-shelf, provided all the essential common services for the amassed dwellings. Mass produced integrated capsules could be inserted, moved and interchanged in a variety of support structures. A somewhat impractical solution as the stacking either requires redundant structural components or a secondary structure, which increases costs and resource use. Still projects like Habitat 67 epitomized the application of this architectural utopia. While related to Japanese metabolism, this same mega-structure strategy inspired less architectural visions; Elmer Frey explored the simple stacking of his mobile homes to create vertical mobile home parks.

 

Today, the megastructure containing customizable housing units idea is seeing a resurgence driven by rapid urbanization and a significant need for housing construction around the world. Prefabricated units that can be inserted into a support structure is theoretically suitable for vertical density since the units can be produced concurrently to the onsite megastructure’s assembly reducing construction time and in principle, costs.  The Townland system (Boeing) produced for Operation Breakthrough and Vending Pod Skyscraper Tower (Haseef Rafiei) share this heritage of the construction of a common infrastructure into which lightweight units can be aggregated. The pod tower goes even further showcasing that today's rapidly evolving digital fabrication technology that makes it possible to literally print or produce dwellings onsite combining two concepts of 20^th century prefabrication: mechanization and the megastructure. 

comparative analysis of two megastructure proposals