Prefab potential.THE PREFABRICATED HOME Prefabricated homes, often referred to as prefab homes, are dwellings manufactured off-site in advance, usually in standard sections that can be easily shipped and assembled. By Colin Davies. London: Reaktion Books. 2005. [pounds sterling]18.95 Colin Davies has written an incisive, provocative and (largely) well researched polemic which can stand as a useful companion to Reyner Banham's Theory and Design in the First Machine Age. His thesis is that architects in the twentieth century misunderstood the potential application of prefabrication prefabrication, in architectural construction, a technique whereby large units of a building are produced in factories to be assembled, ready-made, on the building site. The technique permits the speedy erection of very large structures. to housing, preferring to ignore the practical lessons of Henry Ford's production lines in favour of the ideological glamour image of go-anywhere, do-anything universal 'systems'. There is a particularly juicy analysis of the misjudgement of factory requirements and on-site dimensional tolerances in projects like Wachsmann's Packaged House and Beckman's Lustron House The Lustron house was developed in the post-World War II era in response to the shortage of houses for returning GIs. History In 1947, Chicago industrialist and inventor Carl Strandlund, who had worked with constructing prefabricated gas stations, obtained a in the USA, and by their Meccano Men equivalents in the proselytising UK Modular Society and 3'4" Committee. These shafts hit their targets with pleasurable accuracy, and the comparison with the homespun effectiveness of architect-free balloon frame stick construction and truckable 'Park Homes' in the USA, Scandinavia and here in the UK is timely, and to the point. But, like most polemicists, Davies over-eggs the pudding by excluding (for his own ideological reasons?) UK examples which could actually have reinforced his argument. His apparent reliance on secondary sources leads him to brush aside to remove from one's way, as with a brush. See also: Brush the work of the LCC (Leadless Chip Carrier, Leaded Chip Carrier) See leadless chip carrier, CLCC and PLCC. 1. LCC - Language for Conversational Computing. Written at CMU in the 1960's. architects in the 1920s in Barnet, utilising Scano and Atholl timber and steel-framed construction to produce an estate which stands comparison with any of the Scandinavian examples he holds up for admiration. And his dismissal of the important work of Frederick Gibberd and Philip Powell on the 35 000 highly popular BISF BISF British Iron and Steel Federation Type Al steel-framed houses of the 1940s as 'architectural treatment' is just plain silly. For these examples demonstrate that prefabricated pre·fab·ri·cate tr.v. pre·fab·ri·cat·ed, pre·fab·ri·cat·ing, pre·fab·ri·cates 1. To manufacture (a building or section of a building, for example) in advance, especially in standard sections that can be easily shipped and homes--not as 'housing', but as products--form a market to which architects can and should make an informed, expert contribution. And that, in fact, is Davies' final message. |
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