Prefabrication for Housing: a Compendium

Walter Gropius (left) and Konrad Wachsmann at the Assembly of a Packaged House.

After many false starts over the last century, prefabrication seems to be coming into its own as a method for delivering multi-family housing, as well as individual homes. Here we collect:

Modular Housing Explorations, the transcript of a panel discussion at AIA San Francisco’s 2017 NEXT Conference, featuring Yes Duffy, Patrick Kennedy, Fei Tsien, and Stanley Saitowitz.

The Modularity Is Here: a Modern History of Modular Mass Housing Schemesby Kate Wagner, writing as a guest columnist for 99% Invisible. Created and hosted by Roman Mars,99% Invisible is one of the most popular podcasts on iTunes and is available on RadioPublic, via RSS and through other apps. Begun as a project of KALW public radio and AIA San Francisco, it is about “all the thought that goes into the things we don’t think about — the unnoticed architecture and design that shape our world.”

Looking Back at Operation BREAKTHROUGHa conversation among Nicholas deMonchaux, Larry Dodge, and Richard Bender on Operation BREAKTHROUGH, from arcCA 07.4, “Prefabiana.”

David Thurman’s The Lustron Home: Fascination with a Prefabricated Modern House, from arcCA 02.3, “Building Value.”

Ice Cube Celebrates the Eames, produced by video director David Meyers as the third installment in a creative campaign by TBWA\Chiat\Day Los Angeles to promote Pacific Standard Time: Art in L.A.1945- 1980. Pacific Standard Time was a collaboration of more than sixty cultural institutions across Southern California, which came together for six months from October 2011 to April 2012 to tell the story of the birth of the Los Angeles art scene and how it became a major new force in the art world.
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