Prefabrication experiments - 513 - Junior Trelement industrialized building system

 

The endless battle of standardization versus customization, a longstanding obstacle stinting the uptake of industrialized construction, has often guided the conception and promotion of open systems capable of bridging the conceptual gap between a cost-effective required seriality and ingrained configurational agility. Design flexibility becomes an advantage and a selling point for the commercialization of these industrialized construction systems as demonstrated by Alco Germany's Junior Trelement kit of aluminum pieces, patterned on adaptable grids implemented in one-story facilities, first in Germany and then throughout Europe. 

 

Advertisements and the published product catalogue describe the early-1970s platform as a solution for personalized affordable manufactured architecture for everything from schools to office buildings and to single-family dwellings. The system's aluminum frame was regulated by a triangular grid, with connecting beams forming a hexagon geometry of roof joists attached to a six-pronged plate; this configuration shaped the basic polygonal composition. Available in rectangular as well as the triangular arrangement described above, the Junior Trelement structure spanned approximately 5 meters. In the triangular version - each equilateral module had a segment length of 2,3 or 2,5 meters. The intersection plate at maximum spans sat on an aluminum column or post whose cross section mirrored the connector's star shape.

 

Ideally suited to single-storey buildings, the Trelement horizontal plane roof could be tessellated to create coverings of any shape and size. Still marketed today, the company also promotes an after-sales service for existing buildings constructed with the system - foregrounding the advantage of repairability and replacement of existing parts. 

 

This type of systemic circularity is embedded in Trelement's DNA as well as its aluminum parts. Marginally applied in buildings due to fire constraints, aluminum's malleability specifically its capacity to be extruded in very precise shapes or profiles - makes it an ideal material for this type of time-based adaptability as elements can be put together and disassembled multiple times without fatiguing. Further each piece is theoretically interchangeable with those of any other building made of the same components, establishing a potential trading network of Trelement parts harvested from disused, disassembled buildings. 

Alco's Junior Trelement System