M o d u l a r , S u s t a i n a b l e a n d C u s t o m i z e d
733
Ecohousing kit – Caterpillar. “Ikea Stiftung”, 2008
The competition promoted by IKEA on the home of the future has given the opportunity
to experiment the potential inherent in a house intended as an assembling kit. This is a
not new subject in the history of architecture. Many architects have tackled with the
design of houses to be serially produced, such as Le Corbusier with “Maison Citrohan”,
the house to be serially produced just like automobiles, Wright with “Assembled House”
(1931), a house with three minimal units to be widened based on the user’s needs. In the
1940sWachsmann and Gropius - migrated from Germany - designed the “Packaged
House” for the American market - a single storey, with a straightforward rectangular plan,
a light pitched roof and a porch - but the project was a true failure. For Wachsmann - as
Colin Davies says - the Packaged House was not really a house, not a locus for the lives
of real people, not even a machine for living in; it was an abstract geometrical system,
tending always towards mathematical perfection. Buckminster Fuller designed Wichita
House a hybridized version of two prototypes never assembled. Built by Graham in 1948
it was one of the most innovative individual family house but like the Dymaxion, the
Wichita House would enter the annals of replicable utopian homes that would never see
the light of day. In 1945 John Entenza, the editor of Arts and Architecture magazine,
launched the Case Study House Program and commissioned to various architects
projects of single dwellings to be mass produced. Among these is Ray and Charles
Eames Case study House 8 which will become their own home and studio but it will
never be added in a catalogue; moreover the Eames never developed their catalogue
component house idea. Too innovative was considered the Maison Coque proposed to
Citroën by Jean Prouvé in the early Fifties. The House for the Abbé Pierre (Prouvé,
1956) as well the Case study House 8 was built as a single prototype and it was never
mass produced, probably it was considered too a radical solution the bearing structure
facilities unit located in the middle of the living room. None of these and other examples
has ever gotten past the prototype stage. Colin Davies claimed that no designer was
really determined to built such houses. “With the possible exception of Frank Lloyd
Wright’s Usonians, all of the above houses were designed with serious intention of
putting them into mass production” Nonetheless, a market demand did exist. Buying
houses on catalogue during the early years of the twentieth century in the United States
was a rather common practice. Several companies offered mail order houses, the most
important was Sears Roebuck which, between 1908 and 1945, had produced more than
four hundred and fifty different house types and sold about 70.000 units, without any
famous architect’s contributions. Even in Europe many prefabricated timber houses were
built in the suburbs of several cities between the 1920 and 1930. Lastly, IKEA in 1996
started to produce houses for the Swedish and British market to meet the desperate
need for low-cost housing. The HousingLab proposal can be placed in this scenario, and
is based on the aggregation of a number of modules to be selected from a catalogue,
and mounted according to several extensible and transformable configurations. The
modules are designed to be manufactured off-site, transported to the site by truck, and
dry-built in a very short time. The specific design of each module is determined by
functional needs and bioclimatic needs. Indeed the house can provide its own energetic
balance thanks to a passive solar gain system joined to an active solar gain system.
There are several types of modules: a service module, with bathroom, kitchen, laundry
room, wardrobe and stairs; a distribution module. It is the tallest module and works as a
solar collector; a wired module with connections to the data communication network;
room. Two modules create different configurations of living room, dining room, bedroom
and office; greenhouse; tank for the collection of water. The smallest house (28.00 sqm)
is composed of 6 modules. In order to best exploit natural sources (sun and wind) the
modules should be mounted along the North/South direction. Starting from the minimal
unit, it is possible to create a varying number of configurations that can meet several
needs for personalization, flexibility and adaptability.
