Prefabrication experiments - 333 - Alside instant house

The connection between architects and industry shaped many infamous experiments toward the factory production of housing or building systems. For a time in the middle of the twentieth century, themes of mass production, architectural ideals and industrial design innovations coalesced contending to reform construction’s lagging productivity. Modularity and dimensional coordination were and remain the conceptual foundations for applying manufacturing principles to architecture to repeat parts and components from design to design; repetition being the mainstay of any manufacturing doctrine. Applying these strategies to architectural design was the objective of  Emil Tessin's partnership with Alside Corporation to market and produce a modular house, also publicized as the instant house. 

 

A graduate of MIT's Building Engineering and Construction program, Tessin, like many of his contemporaries believed the industrialization of construction would reduce costs and increase quality in much the same way other commodity’s fabrication had been transformed by mass production. He worked for the Alside corporation and directed Alside Homes in the late 1950s consolidating the company's foray into housing construction. Alside is probably best known for inventing the first baked enamel aluminum siding in the USA. 

 

Tessin's patent for a modular house (1962) was granted during his stint with Alside. The houses' design employed the proprietary aluminum technology for composite panels, exposed a steel skeletal structure and was assuredly inspired by modernist principles; links with the case study houses realized a decade earlier are evident. 

 

The patent explains the systemic idea of a 8x12x14-foot volume, a prime unit of space that along with other units would organize any number of valid architectural aggregations or juxtapositions. The unit’s construction employed repeating mass-produced parts, connections and details: steel vertical or horizontal structural members formed the volume edges and Alside sandwich panels were used for the volume's faces. The factory was set up to mass produce 200 homes per day in the early 1960s in Akron, Ohio. Even with a sales and production target of 10 000 houses in 1964, the apparent newness factor in both architectural esthetics and construction techniques were too much for the era's conservative consumer. Only a couple of hundred houses were produced and this idealized relationship between architect and industry ended. 

source:

https://thefrosthouse.com/home/emil-tessin/