Prefabrication experiments - 315 - Icons - 05 - Eames and steel kit-of-parts

 

When architects are surveyed about prefabrication, they are either really enthusiastic about the perspective of controlling the entire design, manufacturing and construction process or most commonly they reveal their longstanding prejudice toward prefab’s lack of singularity. Somewhere between these two extreme points of view, most share a fondness for «discipline and academia approved» examples of original architecture made from mass-produced parts. 

 

Architecture from off-the shelf parts was driven by the normalization of steel structures at the end of the 19^th and beginning of the 20^th century. As connectors, profiles, supply chains, and manufacturers outlined production, a design for assembly production approach sustained steel building.  The Truscon steel kit (1915) and the foundation of the American Institute of Steel Construction (1921) both exemplify how regulation helped democratize steel.

 

Charles and Ray Eames designed and built perhaps the most iconic steel kit-of-parts. One of The Case Study Houses federated by Arts and Architecture’s John Entenza to develop the post war house, the Eames’ CSH 8 was one of the only early houses from the program to actually use steel.  Assembled in 1949-50 by the couple and a group of assistants and students, the components, columns, open web joists and beams arrived on site pre-cut and with required holes or anchors to facilitate erection.  A uni-directional braced frame structure, its aligned 20-foot spanning portal frames shape two rectangular prisms separated by an exterior courtyard. I Beams connected to the posts support the second story while open web girders structure the flat roof. The Eames' house is a juxtaposition of three volumes: a living space, an outdoor garden courtyard and a studio volume. Both studio and living spaces deploy a double height space vertically related to the adjacent landscape. Along with its clear structural system, a curtain wall kit composed of transparent glass or opaque coloured panels clads the steel skeleton. The façades clearly express the modular kit aesthetic as all dimensions reflect its modularity coordinated with the overall structural grid. Truscon products are used throughout the house; decking, Cemesto panels, all portray the type of industrial and architectural partnerships that were encouraged in The Case Study House program and used by Eames to showcase a new way forward for an American modern and industrialized architecture. 

Eames House, Shulman archive, 

© J. Paul Getty Trust. Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (2004.R.10) 

Prefabrication experiments - 314 - Icons - 04 - Richard's Medical Centre by Louis Kahn

 

Orchestrating the relationship between form, function, structure, envelope and mechanical devices is one of architectural modernity's most important legacies. The methodical division of an edifice into clearly identifiable elements, components, sub-assemblies and their subsequent layering into hierarchies influenced and outlined industrialized building principles as an efficient way forward for construction. Within this notable spectrum of ideas, a tenet stands out as the union of systems theory and dimensional coordination, both epitomized modernism at the beginning of the 20th century: the clear separation of served and service spaces. Served spaces are the main living / working areas, inhabited freely, while service spaces refer to networks and areas labelled for circulation, mechanical systems or other supporting elements. 

 

Louis Kahn is recognized for his masterful harmonic arrangements of served and service spaces. From Kahn’s work, a collaboration with structural engineer August Komendant for the Richard’s Medical Centre building in Philadelphia built 1957-61 for the University of Pennsylvania exemplifies these fundamental organizing principles. The Structural frame is marked by the distinction of service and served spaces as floorplates are treated as a thick open web «service» slabs assembled from precast and prestressed concrete components. Typically spanning 45ft x 45ft (13,7m x 13,7m) the mega concrete space frames are composed of Vierendeeltruss like elements. Each square tower’s two-way floor structures are supported by eight perimeter columns placed on a 15-foot (4,5 m) grid at the midpoint of each floor edge freeing cantilevered corner angles. From and aligned with the exoskeletal columns, four principal truss beams form a central crisscross pattern and support outrigged perimeter beams that bound the floor plate. Other secondary truss elements infill the thick slab's grid. All spans are regulated by a strict 7,5 foot (2,25 m) planning grid.  The Floor plate voids are connected to vertical service towers used for mechanical distribution and circulation.  The reinforced precast concrete elements were assembled on-site; Each joint's rebar extended and then mortared to achieve a complete monolithic structure. Representative of Louis Kahn's didactic language, the building's section is equally clear as each floor connects to and relates to vertical service tubes by becoming a type of open duct to serve the free-flowing space's above them. 

Floor plate structural diagram 

Prefabrication experiments - 313 - Icons - 03 - Le Corbusier and Perriand's hygiene pod

 

In prefabrication, everything old becomes new again. Serial production to mitigate societal and circumstantial difficulties inspired and in some ways sustained modernity in architecture. Present conditions including decreasing productivity, scarcity of traditional trades, supply chain interruptions and growing demand for buildings of every size and scope, are regenerating attention and acceptance of prefabricated and industrialized building systems. Volumetric modular or panelized construction and DfMA platforms for building are being promoted as «novel» ways of streamlining construction and manufacturing. Current challenges parallel those of a century ago. Exploration undertaken in periods of similar crises first proposed factory production as a solution for offering quality and quantity to the masses. French infamous architect Le Corbusier's maison DOM-INO (1909) epitomized the idea of repeatable production applied to architecture. The platform structure, concrete flat slab on concrete posts, also introduced open and free planning principles. The structural framework could be applied to any housing type and was scalable and replicable in high-density prototypes (Unité d'habitation at Marseilles) and small-scale housing (Quartier Ouvrier at Pessac). Along with this platform system, Le Corbusier envisioned and represented mass-production for other building systems and parts.

 

In one of Le Corbusier's most famous partnerships, with designer Charlotte Perriand, famous for the interiors and kitchens at Marseilles, the two architects inspired by industrial advances and the theory of efficient «machines for living» conceived in 1938 what could be described as a machine for hygiene.  The bathroom pod or the service core, a flagship strategy for applying manufacturing in housing has been revived in recent experiments as an analogue to automotive manufacturing activating the long standing comparison between chassis and engine where the pod represents the building's appliance. Le Corbusier and Perriand's «installation sanitaire» loosely translated as amenity for hygiene included a water closet, sink and shower in a minimal 1.5 x 1.5 x 2.3 m outline.  The bathroom pod would be completely pre-plumbed and wired to be installed in any building system. Proposed in flat plate steel (stainless steel) the pod was a fully integrated industrial unit and the patent documents describe it as a new product circumscribed by minimal although ergonomic dimensions. An iconic comparison, the chassis and the pod creates an idealized version of mass reproducible buildings.

Patent drawings from FR no. 825279

Prefabrication experiments - 312 - Icons - 02 - Lustron homes

 

The mass production of dwellings obeyed two opposing value systems during the twentieth century; The single-family dwelling and the collective housing block were both generated from demand for cheap and quickly built dwellings. The previous blog post examined Raymond Camus’ contribution to the «panel building», an icon of socialist collective building production systems and supply chains supported by government intervention. A more capitalist vision, federated by public and private partnerships spawned the most recognised manufactured house of the twentieth century. 

 

Driven by accumulated pre-war housing shortages and supplemented by returning veterans encouraged to set up a post-war family life, industrialist Carl Gunner Strandlund directed more than 37 million dollars of government aid toward his newly invented porcelain enameled steel coated panels to invent the Lustron House. Encouraged by aggressive housing policy and a projected military-industrial complex, steel components would be leveraged to feed industrial development and the mass construction of houses. Steel was synonymous with modernity, strength and durability. The small 31-foot by 35-foot Lustron bungalow was patterned on a simple modular planning grid informed by the 2-foot by 2-foot enamel cladding panels. The open plan with included amenities, linked with traditional imagery offered an affordable representation of a burgeoning mid-century modern lifestyle. At 10 000$ per unit the house’s price was competitive with traditional construction. 

 

The cold-formed steel framed components were welded in the factory into panels for walls and roof trusses. The enamel panels enveloped the interior and exterior of both walls and roofs. Compressible sealing gaskets provided weathertight joints revealing the relationship between home construction and an a potentially increasing level of industrialization.  The production facility began delivering houses in September 1948. Components were arranged and sequenced on iconic trailer trucks. Pre-wired and pre-plumbed walls displayed the structural skeleton and mechanical guts while conveying an image of neatness, organisation and reduced waste. In the end only a few thousand Lustron dwellings were actually built. A combination of market resistance, fragmented construction industry and an aversion to the public funding of privatized housing production led to the company's bankruptcy and the house «America had been waiting for» became another blip in the field of prefabrication experiments.

Image from Lustron.org