Prefabrication experiments - 440 - Mass Affordability - 01 - The Balloon Frame

Urbanization, population migrations, political instability and economic crises engender globalized pressures that make suitable and sustainable housing provision one of the most imperative challenges of the 21st century. The generative potential of manufacturing applied to housing supply provides a renewed topic for reforming longstanding productivity issues in conventional construction. The ten next posts will look at some of industrialization's successful strategies for responding to vast housing crises of past eras.

 

The expansion of populations on a new continent in the early and mid 1800’s outlined requirements for everything from houses to barns, to places of worship and everything in between. The mass adoption of light timber framing, specifically the balloon frame, in the midwestern part of the USA soon branched out to every part of America. As opposed to heavy post and beam construction with complex joinery to ensure stability and durability, the cruder framing required only milled timber and cut nails to create buildings of any type and shape. 

 

Sometimes attributed to George W. Snow, a Chicago carpenter, the light timber frame was not invented but evolved through shared knowledge and the collective simplification of traditional half-timber construction. The system characterized by two-story vertical studs democratized through simple techniques, nailed assembly, is strengthened and stabilized through structural redundancy. Vertical, horizontal and diagonal bracing members placed close together in a filigree box frame streamline supply chains from forestry to mill to suppliers, builders and consumers. The system’s no-frills D-I-Y quality became an integral part of Americana, used to build pattern buildings, cottages, cabins, A-frames, and provided the basis for the most successful application of low-cost manufactured housing principles: the mobile home. 

 

Today’s version of the balloon frame, known now as the platform frame is still one of the most economical and generalized building structural archetypes. Included in panelized structures or modular volumetric structures, the mass production of cheap, standardized, well recognized and available building components is a central principle of lowering costs. The design flexibility from the same simple parts also displayed light-framing as a model the world over for low-cost and low-tech building.

left: Balloon Frame; right: mobile home framing

Prefabrication experiments - 439 - Catalogues and styles

 

A spinoff of the spawning 20^th century automobile industry, early mobile home manufacturing deployed mass production principles to build affordable dwellings. These principles are well documented; building a lightweight timber structure over a steel platform, wheeled out of the factory, delivered and installed on any site. The pre-cut kit house also used mass produced timber frames but from a different value proposition in as much as its design process offered increased options; pieces could be shaped and packaged for multiple configurations less affected by transport criteria. 

 

Both models of twentieth century prefabrication used plan books to organize procurement. Clients could choose from designs articulated to harmonized modular strategies and supply chains. The Sears catalogue of houses is probably the most famous and inspired other companies like Canadian icon Eaton to offer their own version. The number of designs was staggering when analyzed in relation to what architects often decry as standardized prefab. 

 

The conceptual distance between how industry and architects interpret the catalogue endures as an interesting dilemma for manufacturers. While architects have often argued against style to inform patterns and pastiche architectural compositions, their proposals remain relatively similar in terms of fundamentals differing only in aesthetic orientations. Resolution 4 architecture's took on the modular catalogue «The Modern Modular» with what at first glance seems like a third option: A library of spatial components and modular variability anchored to an objective of spatial and production rationalization. However, the aesthetic remains manifestly modern defined by clean and minimal lines. 

 

Is architectural variability truly about singularity or is it about style. The Eaton catalogue contained traditional designs outlined by similar detailing and volumes, while Res4’s architectural approach more closely mimics a type of pattern language leading to houses that all look the same, hardly singular. Industry’s take on the precut house was in a sense at once rational and varied. Contemporary architects argue that prefab should be organized around similar components, nonetheless, mostly tainted by modernist attitudes. This aesthetic and disciplinary-informed gap between architectural sophistication and generally palatable designs continues to hinder prefab’s streamlined application.

left: Eaton Catalogue; right: Resolution 4 Architecture modularity