Prefab Essay
LV Kit Home via Walker Art Center
Andrew Blauvelt: Today’s modern prefab, is not reducible to a uniform aesthetic criteria or a predictable material palette. There are, of course, similarities and generalities that can be seen in the current offerings: a penchant for minimal rooflines, large expanses of glass, and a range of finish options. Although today’s projects share the optimism of postwar prefab, they lack the totalizing vision and utopian ambitions of some of their predecessors. It is a much more contingent affair, with production expressed in tactical terms: How much customization can exist without sacrificing the efficiencies of mass production? What kind of domestic lifestyle is suggested and supported by this house if the typical single-family home created by the post-war suburb is no longer a given? Even the simple but seemingly heretical idea of architecture as a mass produced product is a decidedly different orientation for architects. However, contemporary prefab could be considered one more way for architectural design to reenter the residential market—an arena in which ninety percent of what is built does not involve an architect. Can prefab offer more ecologically sensitive solutions that are missing in more mainstream housing segments? More importantly, how does one judge the success or failure of recent prefab efforts?
There are literally hundreds of prefab concepts, which exist as readily as computer renderings are producible. In this realm, the existence of a built prototype and units in production become useful indicators of progress. However, the combined output of all the projects in this exhibition is minute compared to the total number of conventional new house constructions. Is it realistic to expect a competitive number of prefab units, much less from modern-style prefab? While the postwar search for a modern prefab house was predicated on fulfilling an entire nation’s housing shortage or the transformation of the vast residential construction industry, the contemporary quest is currently a niche market with more modest ambitions. Developers can play an important role in expanding the use of prefab houses, not only because they deal in larger quantities of housing stock but also because they can more easily provide the land, which is the crucial missing link for most potential clients for prefab houses. Cost continues to be the primary judge in determining the relevancy of prefab despite the difficulties of cost-per-square foot comparisons. How is time saved or material waste reduction in the prefab process incorporated into such analyses? Ultimately, the Darwinian principles of the market decide the fate of prefab— as it has in the past and will no doubt continue to do so. So too with the other more philosophical questions affecting the place of prefab in the context of architectural history and practice, and these too will be decided, in time.
