Prefabrication experiments - 416 - S(dwellings) - The Patio / Courtyard House

 

The characteristic difficulty with tying standardized planning principles with architecture’s site specificness has long been a challenge for prefabrication and building industrialization. Vernacular, classic and modern homes have this required connection to locus in common. Climate, topography, and traditions inform regional particularities that disavow normalized designs or so it would seem. Notwithstanding this required singularity, even the most regionally specific architectural canons carry some generalizable principles; from modularity in traditional Japanese building, to stacking log joinery in Norwegian vernacular or even curved trunk blades in medieval English Cruck frames (early A-frames) were all democratized in their time and place.

 

An almost universal generic archetype used to define a house's attachment to place is the central patio. Atriums, positioned to concentrate and relate surrounding spaces, establish a focal void which opposes the way small tract bungalows are related to site. The patio house creates a specific focal point, while the typical bungalow is the center point; the two arrangements express very distinct ways of relating to positive and negative space generated by their geometries.  

 

The twentieth century Patio House was imagined by many architects as a counterproposal to the standard house to garden configuration for creating specific from generic lightweight timber framing to maximize interior and exterior connectivity. Alvar Aalto’s experimental summer house in Säynätsalo, Finland exemplifies these modern themes. The design is a modular grid planning masterpiece and deploys geometric proportions to define an anchored courtyard. 

 

Using the patio house as a central prefab idea, differentiating designs according to dynamic spatial arrangements, Australian House producer Fabprefab with CHROFI architects assembled their version of a courtyard house. Two principal volumes are placed in enfilade and contain living spaces, a reading room and a covered exterior space. A third, shorter manufactured box, is set partially against the first two generating a void defined by the flanking living box. The small house is a dynamic organization of day and night spaces clearly separated by two modlines attached by a bridging segment.  Enclosed by full height glass walls that reveal a spatial promenade between both patios, the exterior spaces can anchor this simple generalizable plan to any expansive site.

CHROFI architects and FABPREFAB's courtyard house

Prefabrication experiments - 415 - S(dwellings) - The Prefab Bungalow

The automobile transformed territorial planning; leaving the city for its surrounding suburbs or countryside fostered demand for quickly built homes and subsequently for leisure dwellings. A by-product of Henry Ford’s assembly-line principles applied to housing, the small serially produced bungalow on site or in a factory suburbanized America and converted house building into a promoter-based commercial transaction. Tracts of flattened sites were seeded with small reproducible fully-furnished homes. The bungalow, a one floor dwelling designed for the nuclear family is the symbol and central focus of formidable off-site built failures (Lustron) and prolific onsite built successes (Levittowns). The American dream of the utilitarian affordable single-family dwelling produced in an industrialized process was perfected in North America and idealized in globalized literature.

 

German author Walter Meyer Bohe’s  Prefabricated Houses studied the bungalow, outlined its concepts and design parameters for the production of what was put forth as a flexible type for the masses. A published case-study defines a straightforward building strategy not linked it to any specific construction system, but to strict systemic dimensional coordination; generating a harmonized material supply chain, reduced waste and iterative optimizations - all serial production ideals.

 

The manufacturing process could feasibly be mechanized but could also allow site customization by sharing the same spatial elements and parts; An alphabet of components adapted to multiple schemes or arrangements.  Houses respecting the strict modular framework could be scaled and expanded over time using basic panels catalogued with design features including elements like doors, small windows, or even large curtain walls. Today’s term used to describe this type of customizable pattern language would be:  a platform approach to design and construction.  The representation manifests a no-frills structure deploying normalized planning principles articulated to a 125mm grid and a night-day segregation elegantly positioning all private spaces around a collective living space extended by an exterior garden. The central bearing wall reduces spans to a manageable 3,75 meters and even demonstrates the ability to assemble this clear-cut plan from two factory-built boxes. The 94 square meter scheme is a superb illustration of a small modern dwelling.    

Bungalow from Walter Myer-Bohe's Prefabricated Houses (1959)

 

Prefabrication experiments - 414 - XS(dwellings) - Stardust Container Home

 

XS houses are normally associated with mobility or at least transportability.  They can be fabricated from lightweight materials to be easily lifted, carried or built like trailers on a mobile chassis ready to be towed to any site. Their flexibility and diminutive size do not impede their more permanent anchorage with regards to views or according to site conditions; even if the structure you are anchoring was originally sized for movement. These tiny houses can also be made from repurposed volumes meant for other applications.

 

Adapted shipping containers are a case in point and have come to represent a type of subculture dwelling type, recycling the steel boxes as tiny or even large dwellings that stack multiple volumes. Eight feet wide by a standardized length of ten, twenty or forty feet, the conversion from shipping volume into domestic space requires organizations that are both savvy and rational.  ISO boxes can be fitted-out and converted-to-order with amenities, insulation, weatherproofing and permanently fixed to a site-built foundation. 

 

Dream Tiny Living, brandishes many container homes; One specific model, The Stardust, stacks a 20’ unit over a 40’ standard shipping container to outline two exterior living spaces: a deck at the front end of the box and a roof terrace above creating a luxurious composition of spaces. As an ADU or as a permanent micro-dwelling, the space gains a full 4’ of exterior living space when the front doors are open. The interior includes, built-in storage units and a small kitchenette aligned with a dining space. A shower and bath space complete the basic enfilade of functions through the 40’ extrusion. A steel staircase adjacent to the container leads up to a second unit and a large roof terrace suited with fit garden furniture to create a roof deck with a Palladian villa vibe floating above the surrounding landscape. 

 

Exposed steel corner posts and fork-lifting apertures ensure the shipping container’s previous function is not forgotten. On the inside, however, the shiplap white timber cladding, elegant finishes, large openings and sliding barn door portray an aesthetic which would be at home in any contemporary setting.   

Extra-large views in an extra-small frame

Prefabrication experiments - 413 - XS(dwellings) - Nolla: a zero emissions A-frame

Extra-small permanent dwellings come in many shapes and can often be characterized by their relationship with extraordinary sites. Sheds, cabins, huts are rarely bigger than one room. What they lack in size, they certainly make up for in their relationship to a type of reverie and nostalgia for living modestly anchored to the earth by an extraordinary view, a rocky outcrop, or the silence of wooded homestead. 

 

Originally published in 1943 by Conrad E. Meineke, Your Cabin in the Woods depicted a myriad of small shelters along with their potential benefits for communing with nature, self-building and creating an individual haven. Pages were illustrated with plans and detailed instructions for straightforward builds using the most basic architectural and structural organizations. 

 

The «Squatter» built in one day by two men used the iconic A-frame structure. The 150 square foot tiny home highlights the triangular structure’s enduring attractiveness : uniting roof and walls, inherently stable, undemanding assemblies and off the shelf timber components easy to source in any context. From early cruck frames deploying divided curved tree trunks to fashion a compressive arch structure, to assembling dimensional timber stock or leaning two prefabricated oblique panels together in equilibrium, the A-frame is potentially the oldest representation of prefabrication as its elements were prepared in advance of their use. 

 

Extra small, the A-frame has certainly had one of the largest symbolic influences on leisure dwelling construction and is still relevant. The Nolla cabin, built in Finland by designer Robin Falck, is a contemporary expression of the Squatter type presented by Meineke over 80 years ago, showcasing its productive legacy. Nolla means zero in Finnish. The one-room shelter reimagines the A-frame as a modern off-grid - low emissions micro-dwelling. Fashioned entirely of pine and plywood, rafters are fixed to the bottom chord of the composing triangle truss with reinforcing plywood gusset plates. Extending oblique members are adjusted to and lift the cabin over any setting. All components can be precut, flatpacked and delivered to any site. No specialized details and the didactic nature of the triangle truss make it a breeze to build and to comprehend. 

Nolla, a reconceptualized A-frame for contemporary leisure

Prefabrication experiments - 412 - XS (dwellings) - Hitching a home

The ability to carry a home to any setting according to basic needs, employment opportunities, economic challenges, for leisure or simply to respond to a transient lifestyle is an enduring vernacular in architecture. Rational dimensions and ease of assembly/disassembly matters when it comes to moveable dwellings. Freedom will always be dependent on lugging capacity, trail accessibility and material constraints. 

 

The trailer home is the icon of movability and minimal dwelling aspirations. As early twentieth century automobile manufacturing improved, it inspired many to use this newfound affordable mobility to envision hitching houses to Henry Ford’s assembly line principles. 

 

Pioneer Arthur Sherman first built a box timber-frame trailer for a family camping trip in the early 1930s. The 3-meter long  x 1.8-meter wide no frills volume included sleeping bunks, a coal burning stove and a rear trap door to reveal an exterior kitchen increasing livability. Sherman’s trailers became so popular that the simple camping unit became the sustaining product of a prosperous 3-million-dollar company by 1936 selling 6000 box trailers. The mobile home is still one of the most successful products of industrialized housing. Manufacturing on a portable foundation, a steel skeleton, is certainly an intelligent way of travelling but is also a manufacturing «coup de génie» as the product moves around the workshop on a stable, working surface. Whether produced on a linear line or in a cellular production process, once finished, the house is simply hitched and carried away.   

 

Both conventional factory-built mobile homes and homemade tiny house trailers can afford luxuries found in permanent housing including push-out spaces, fully functional kitchens and even second story spaces. Some contemporary models are veritable rolling villas that have little to do with the liberties associated with XS dwellings.

 

From Sherman’s modest solution for leisure to subsequent 10’ wide and 12’ wide evolutions proposed by another pioneer Elmer Frey, the mobile home is a testament to the American speculator exploring opportunities and valuing housing as non-site-specific commodity; a conceptualization that has led to negative subtexts at odds with a longstanding architectural position of dwellings’ necessary anchorage to the spirit of a place. 

The Rollohome movable dwelling as an example of XS-S dwellings