Prefabrication experiments - 311 - Icons - 01 - Raymond Camus

 

Prefabrication and industrialization applied to architecture have generated a vast amount of literature and a plethora of experiments both successful and marginal. From this expanse of knowledge, certain attempts stand out and are omnipresent in exhibits, books, journals and in a sense have come to represent the field of industrialized construction even while most failed in bridging the gap between architecture and manufacturing. The next ten posts will examine selected icons in relation to current practices, methods or materials. 

 

The first icon belongs to a flagship master in applying mass production principles to construction. A second-generation industrialist, Raymond Camus founded the «Société Raymond Camus et Compagnie, procédés industriels de construction» in 1949. The umbrella Camus process comprises many patents published from 1948 to 1968 that describe diverse methods for fabricating and assembling reinforced concrete pre-cast panels. Classified as a heavy-duty system, the strategy is a simple wall and slab monolithically jointed framework assembled from surface elements produced in a factory or sometimes onsite. Reconciling the needs of industry with individual dwelling needs the Camus system proposed an open platform of cells into which infill and functional elements could be inserted according to predetermined plans.  

 

Produced horizontally and at arms length, reinforced concrete panels were cast on tables or surfaces with steel reinforcing laid out as required. Once cast, panels could be clad in facing materials for interior or exterior applications. The panels were heat and steam cured on casting stands and in casings. Mechanical tilting tables lifted the concrete panes to the vertical and panels were loaded on trucks for delivery. Weighing up to 6 metric tonnes, the wall and slab panels were tied and mortared together; outstretching rebar was knotted together and concrete cast over and around it creating a monolithic joint.  Panels could be load bearing or non-bearing facing elements. 

 

Camus produced 26500 dwelling units internationally between 1949 and 1960, most in France and the USSR. The name became synonymous with industrialized building systems. Camus' panels and utility core boxes informed a set building pattern used by multiple architects for multiple buildings in various cities. In this sense Camus' building method would certainly still be valued as a formidable industrialized building system today.

photographs of the Camus process

Prefabrication experiments - 310 - Then and now - 10 - Platform theory and Descon Concordia

The concept of a design platform, sometimes identified today as platform DfMA (design for manufacturing and assembly) is a manufacturing principle potentially applied to architecture. First employed by General Motors, platform theory is the application of a structural or modular framework among several nuanced products. Automobile manufacturers generate a range of models from a series of shared component, research, and production optimizations. In architecture and industrialized construction this idea was conveyed by Walter Gropius’ expandable house in 1909. The modular design yielded design variants from a small number of normalized components. 

 

In 1933, Bemis in «The Evolving House» envisaged an analogy between building and automobile production to improve construction’s productivity. This analogy is still cited today as a source of inspiration to make building construction more efficient.  In 2004 architects Kieran and Timberlake published a manifesto «Refabricating Architecture» affirming a comprehensive vision for applying industrial methodologies used for making automobiles, airplanes and ships in the building industry. Arguably a contemporary synonym for «industrialized building system» without the connotation of mass repetition, the design platform implies a much more integrated model of production involving all stakeholders in design, manufacture, production and distribution.   

 

Powered by new modelling potentials, the DfMA platform approach encompasses a digital thread to control, manage and construct, the entire building process before it is shaped on site. In addition, the exchange of data rich objects, pieces or elements allows different stakeholders to adjust design parameters and details in real time; While debated as a new way forward by Bryden Wood, Project Frog, Mod Z modular, WOHO, 369 Pattern Buildings and many more, the platform approach carries an enduring legacy defined by General Motors, Bemis, Gropius and important prototypes like the Descon System. Descon Concordia's proposal for Operation Breakthrough in 1969 is perhaps one of the most comprehensive building systems of the 20th century that foreshadowed the integrated building systems and platform conceptualizations we see today. Using a basic panelized precast concrete modular building kit, Descon defined all aspects and criteria of the planning, manufacturing and construction process into a streamlined, rationalized and coordinated system. Some 50 years later, platform building puts a new spin on this old idea and is an affirmation of how forward thinking the system was. 

Comparative analysis of two platform systems

Prefabrication experiments - 309 - Then and now - 09 - Service cores

 

Modelled on industrialized and centralized production concepts that evolved in the automotive sector at the beginning of the twentieth century, the utility or service core was proposed for dwellings as analogous to an automobile’s engine. Service spaces, kitchens, bathrooms, technical rooms, laundry rooms, appliances and required connections for wiring, piping, or ducting would be combined in an integrated element delivered to operate or control inhabitable space.  Referred to interchangeably as pods, cores, heart or core unit, the concept argued for a serial standardized production in the form of an architectural accessory. 

 

The architectural rationalization of service spaces was driven by new mechanical facilities and a representation of this can be traced to the American Woman's House by Catharine Beecher (1869): a centralized space for production and a flue for extracting air and other waste from the home. The clustering of technical spaces permeated the discipline and architectural pedagogy. The April 1937 issue of Architectural Forum proposed the term “the house's engine” or “power plant”.  The spatial and material expression of served and serving spaces became a canon of modernism. 

 

Besides developing design elements and advanced technologies, the service core continues to uphold the same rhetoric: simplifying the provision of mechanical spaces for dwellings. Two models of the utility core show how little this innovation has changed: Published in an issue of Life magazine in April 15th 1946 as complementary to a series of measures that would help tackle the housing shortage, the Mobilecore developed by a timber frame contractor proposed a service box around which the house could be built conventionally. In the same vein, California company Protohomes, founded in 2009, has devised a house building platform based on the separation of an open adaptable space “hyperspace” and their two-story technical hub “protocore”.  Protohomes proposes a completely digitally integrated and smart hub coordinated in the factory and delivered as a product providing and controlling dwelling amenities in line with modern day needs and further can been seen as a totally connected core. 

 

Even with a rich heritage of exploration, the service core remains marginally applied, mostly driven by producers, but has found certain success in hospitality architecture with repetitive planning patterns.  While arguing for flexibility over time, the factory produced core has often proved to precluded adaptability as its proprietary nature impedes repairs or even finding parts for replacement. 

comparative analysis of two cores