Graduation Year

2010

Document Type

Thesis

Degree

M.Arch.

Degree Granting Department

Architecture and Community Design

Major Professor

Mark Weston, M.Arch.

Keywords

Prefabricated, Prefab, Pre-synthesized, Technology, Modular, Panelized, System, Housing, Residential, Dwelling, Anti-in Situ, Architecture

Abstract

The prefabricated home has been said to be the site of innovation, exploration and sometimes spectacular failure since the mid 20th-century (Home Delivery, 8). Despite years of research and advancements in technology, pre-synthesization in the domestic realm has typically remained loyal to past construction methods/materials and banal aesthetic ripostes. As a result, the modern pre-synthesized home suffers in terms of programmatic diversity, spatial feedback, supertemporal expansion (in reference to the supertemporal art movement) and societal acceptance.

Materials and technologies are constantly upgrading in our increasingly technetronic society. Re-marketing the prefabricated home will require a similar modus operandi. Investigating the successes and failures of other prefabricated products and systems will lead to a better understanding of what the next generation of pre-synthesized housing systems will require. These requirements are then to be cultivated and supported by a theoretical entity, deployableHOMES, which represents an architectural process in a product oriented civilization.

Motivated by the performance capabilities of underutilized materials such as FRP pultrusion and concrete polymer technology, this thesis proposes the formulation of a pre-synthesized component housing system which offers the maximum plasticity of design by allowing for distinctive environmental, spatial and programmatic responses. The system will be used to articulate a series of prototypes to be deployed in different topographical conditions.

The future of prefabrication lies not in a series of ephemeral structures, which adopt non inclusive proprietary construction systems, but with fully integrated systems of interactive components. Components which allow for the refl ection of changes in societies perspectives of understood programmatic space and aesthetics of domestic tectonic pragmatism. These changes attempt to inaugurate an anti-in situ architectural movement which no longer imitates individuality or spatially responsive interactive design.

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