The juxtaposition of automobile manufacturing with architectural prefabrication has predicted paradigmatic shifts in construction, along with productivity rhetoric for over a century. The logic is straightforward: if complex, high-quality objects like cars can be made to such perfected standards with factory methodologies - lowering costs while increasing features - why are buildings stuck and crafted in such one-off wasteful processes?
As carriage manufacturers began to include engines in their horseless drawn wagons, the automobile industry matured with pioneers Olds and Ford proposing the assembly line and interchangeable parts by the 1920s. This burgeoning platform theory initiated normalisation practices by the Big Three in America and the democratization of the same principles in other countries (Fiat in Italy, Citroën in France). The artisanal crafting of motorized wagons was completely supplanted by mass production. During the fertile decades following the Second World War, the automobile industry was further improved through automation and Toyota Production System theory, articulating a highly integrated model from design to parts' manufacturing and final assembly.
The advances and history of car making inspired analogous patterns and experiments in the supply of housing to reform construction practices. Early building industrialization included German companies Christoph & Unmack and Fertighaus Weiss. Both provided a framework for harmonized supply chains of materials, production jigs and hangars to produce pre-cut timber structures. Aladdin (1906) was one of the first companies in the North America to offer prepared bundles and kits, followed by modular volumetric building leaders Atco (1947) and Clayton (1956). Japanese companies (Sekisui (1960), Daiwa (1955)) harvested Toyota's principles to shape successful postwar prefab. Notwithstanding the rich conceptual links, the parallels between house and car production are tenuous, as prefab and site-built housing evolved differently, with prefab only marginally penetrating the market as onsite's perceived flexibility inhibited scaled design and production. Even with massive government intervention and multi-generational roadmaps for increasing uptake, all failed in implementing industry-wide consolidation leaving the sector highly fragmented and artisanal. Fundamentally, building is and has long been regarded as an art form, structured in a different way leading to the one-off singular building as the valued model producing a long-lasting discord between industry and artistry.
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| Olds motor company (1897) ; Atco (1947) |
