Industrialization and the subsequent marketplace commodification proved that the invisible hand (Adam Smith’s vision of the free market) commanded mass production, by replicating standards, tasks and procedures to reduce costs and normalize quality. A centralized strategy that supports and harmonizes supply chains with design, manufacturing and commercialization is the basis of any successful production strategy. Similar ideas have been envisioned to provide affordable housing through highly integrated industrial procedures.
Government run factories for precast concrete panels, volumetric modular units and components highlighted postwar production in the USSR as the socialist republics perfected building systems. The panel block was the most iconic result inspired by and patterned over Ernst May's experiments in Germany in the early 20thcentury. May’s ideas were expanded by the USSR’s construction policies. Planning, designing, manufacturing and onsite assembly were all synchronized by a centralized procurement and provision strategy based on typical buildings shaped by a modular grid: a major dimension of 3m with a minor dimension of 30cm, controlled by a rigorously applied 10cm coordination matrix.
This productive model motivated many other countries; An American delegation traveled to the USSR in 1969 to gain a better understanding of the government run factories and study how off-site construction was generating the kind of housing output that the US required. Many of Operation Breakthrough's systems were derived from panelized or precast mega block construction.
Program underwriters’ justification for high levels of industrialization foreshadowed arguments made today: 40-50% less labor, 35-45% faster, higher quality and year-round construction. The Gosstroys, state construction committees, at the republic, local and city levels oversaw all Soviet construction from providing sites, financing, typical building designs, to harnessing new materials, machines and methods. Academic and research institutes governed by the centralized Gosstroys framed research grants according to specific innovation potentials. This concentrated method of decision making certainly made it possible to construct vast amounts of housing, however it also formed some of the negative connotations still haunting construction's industrialization.
Perhaps the lesson for today's housing crisis is the need for government involvement to stimulate and standardize processes while encouraging open design frameworks to avoid the total repetition of patterns that gave us the brutal panel block.
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