Add-on

Definition

The add-on is the prefabricated multi-programmed unit of the Composite House, the unbuilt prototype housing system by Ferda Kolatan and Erich Schoenenberger of su11 architecture+design: "components designed in response to specific programmatic and atmospheric needs" that "carry the capacity to have walls, stairways, doors, or storage attached to them." The add-on system's defining move is the minimization of the shell: a local contractor builds only the "house skeleton" from wood or steel, and "the architects, in a sense, divorce themselves from the role of designing the building or shell and allow the resultant exterior to be derived based on chosen, mostly interior, program" — "each homeowner, through the selection and combination of their preferred add-ons, would then personally design the house." Customization is dimensionalized — "one unit for a toilet, two for a sink cabinet, three for a shower, and four for a bathtub" — and materialized in a single finish: elements are manufactured "with an epoxy finish, one that would wear equally well and meet the needs of both the interior and exterior environment, balancing them hierarchically." The add-ons "are designed to be interchangeable, providing the ability to reconfigure elements over time as necessary and/or desired"; the architects "consider the units as a habitable puzzle consisting of several functions, including object, furniture, and space"; color, "typically considered a decorative finish, [is] applied largely as coding devices that define the planes and use of the elements"; and "surface and texture are integral to the design, acknowledging the emotional connection people have with materials" (Blauvelt, quoted). The house "celebrates everyday elements that are functionally critical to the interior of the home like stairs, cabinets, and storage spaces." The companion system, Composite Architecture, strips the unit of architecture altogether: "purely interior prefabricated assemblages" (sofa/bed, table/storage units) that "exist without connection to an architecture" and "could be plugged into existing space to create true interior prefabrication," selected and previewed "through an online interface." Schneiderman's synthesis crowns the system: "The traditional design hierarchies have been eliminated, and the resultant form exists as an equalization of all elements."

Key Thinkers

• Deborah Schneiderman — the concept's reporter and theorist: the Composite House as "truly a culmination" of the prefab-interior investigation, and the hierarchy-equalization reading of the add-on system.
• su11 architecture+design (Ferda Kolatan & Erich Schoenenberger) — the concept's designers: the add-on, the minimized shell, the homeowner-composed house, the dimensional unit system, and the Composite Architecture spin-off (not yet paged — see log).

Related Concepts

• Prefab Interior — the register the add-on completes: the interior element as the generator of the whole house, "the resultant exterior… derived based on chosen, mostly interior, program."
• Structural Furniture — the sibling unit: Ban's furniture carries the house; su11's add-ons compose it. Both eliminate the design hierarchy, but only the Furniture House makes the interior element load-bearing.
• Mass Customization — the customization economy: the dimensional system (toilet = 1 unit, tub = 4), homeowner configuration, and the online selection interface as the pre-digital counterpart of serially variable production.
• Self-Build — the participation lineage: where the Segal method returns construction to the inhabitant, the add-on system returns composition — the homeowner "personally design[s] the house" through selection and combination.
• Assemblage — the "habitable puzzle": "several functions, including object, furniture, and space" combined in interchangeable proximity — the composite, non-hierarchical arrangement that the art-historical assemblage names.
• Interior Architecture — the disciplinary stake: the add-on inverts Manack's direction — the interior does not intensify its distinction from architecture; the architecture is derived from the interior.
• Inside/Outside Dialectic — the material dissolution: the single epoxy finish "wear[ing] equally well and meet[ing] the needs of both the interior and exterior environment, balancing them hierarchically."
• Right to Design — the normative cousin: the occupant-composed house as access to design decisions normally retained by professionals.

Source Support

Sources in the wiki that discuss this concept:

• Inside the prefab house (Schneiderman 2018) — the source of the concept: the add-on definition, the skeleton-and-shell minimization, the homeowner-composed house, the dimensional unit system (toilet 1, sink 2, shower 3, tub 4), the epoxy finish's hierarchical balancing, the interchangeable "habitable puzzle," color as coding device, and the Composite Architecture plug-in spin-off.

Open Questions

• Is add-on selection design or configuration? "Each homeowner… would then personally design the house" stretches "design" from composition to choice among engineered options — where does this sit between the Segal method's genuine self-build and the mail-order catalogue house (see self-build)?
• su11 "divorce themselves from the role of designing the building or shell": is the derived exterior architecture at all — or interior program grown outward, the discipline's object (the interior) promoted to the building's form-giver (see the fabricating conception's inverted histories, fabrication)?
• The epoxy finish "balancing them hierarchically" interior and exterior in one wear-surface: is a single material register for both domains the literal dissolution of the inside/outside dialectic at the level of finish?
• The add-ons are "interchangeable, providing the ability to reconfigure elements over time": the add-on house is designed to be altered. Is this adaptive reuse (adaptive-reuse) inscribed at the point of original design — a building that expects its own future interventions?
• The Composite Architecture assemblages "exist without connection to an architecture" and "could be plugged into existing space": does a prefab interior that needs no building finally break interior architecture's founding dependency ("architecture is a precondition for interior architecture") — the condition Manack called impossible to reverse?