Prefabrication experiments - 505 - Marrying Design and Affordability - The Modern Split-level

The frictions between quality housing design and affordability are often restrictive but can sometimes generate innovative types. Seriality versus singularity; individual versus collective; productivity versus creativity, these dualities can be distilled down to the idea that housing must balance creativity with streamlined and efficient supply chains. Replicability versus originality is the crux of the conceptual divide between architecture and construction or design and production, long mired in different fields with divergent value sets. 

 

The prejudices against postwar suburban tract housing design are symbolic of this divide with builders producing large quantities of repetitive housing to respond to fundamental needs. This had most architects retreating into positions of passive criticism. However, an engagement of design with production has now and then led to beautiful, formidable and robust housing types by tweaking systems with an ingrained frugality. The platform-framed split-level, synonymous with mid-century development, is one example founded on a fertile relationship between cheap light timber framing and simple spatial ingenuity.

 

The origins of the split-level are explored in literature but the notion that its qualities bridge the gap between design and production is not clearly theorized. Its appreciation by architects, builders and consumers alike conveys elements that cross this cultural divide: simple spatial organization, loftiness of double-height spaces, direct and grounded interaction between interior and exterior spaces, and patios are just some of its valued characteristics.

 

Built in developments all over North America and beyond, with iconic examples by developers like Ralph Bodek, a well-known president of the Philadelphia Home Builders during the 1950s who built more than 6000 homes, and in experimental neighbourhoods by TAC (The Architect’s Collaborative) at Six Moon Hill and Five Fields (both in Lexington, Massachusetts - see blog article 85), the split tuned architectural and productive parameters in a mid-century architectural gem. The simple sectional split illustrated in the image below by architectural historian Nathanael Roesch highlights the vertical dynamism which many adopted as a prototype of single-family dwelling. 

 

Not the only archetype of harmonizing values of design with affordability, the next blog posts will oppose, compare, and define architectural tweaking of systems invented for productivity.

Illustration scanned from: Lane, Barbara Miller. Houses for a New World: Builders and Buyers in American Suburbs, 1945–1965. Princeton University Press, 2015.