Inside the prefab house

Author: Deborah Schneiderman Year: 2018 Source type: chapter (Ch. 15 of The Interior Architecture Reader, ed. Gregory Marinic, Routledge)

Raw file: raw/chapters/schneiderman_2018-inside_the_prefab_house.md

Summary

Interior designer and scholar Deborah Schneiderman (Professor of Interior Design, Pratt Institute; author of Inside Prefab: The Ready-Made Interior, 2012) opens the chapter with a historiographic charge: a century of prefabrication scholarship "has contained a notable omission" — the interior. Against that omission she argues that "the techniques and applications of prefabrication of the interior have been evident for thousands of years," that "prefabrication in the built environment owes much of its advancement to concepts investigated in terms of interior architectural elements and components," and that "the evolution of the prefab house decidedly includes the development of ideas and integration of prefabricated interior components." After a short history of interior-prefab elements (the 1833 Manning Portable Colonial Cottage; Sears kit houses' early-gypsum interior lining; Frank Lloyd Wright's prefabricated frieze; Buckminster Fuller's Dymaxion Bathroom of 1936 as the first complete interior prefabricated assemblage and "a precursor to the pod bathrooms currently being designed and installed in buildings today"), the chapter examines three typologies in which "the interior environment is truly integrated in the conceptualization of the prefabricated house": the Lustron House (1946), a closed-system porcelain-enameled steel house whose built-ins are "programmed prefabricated space"; Shigeru Ban's Furniture House series (1995– ), which elevates furniture "from an object added to a room to a space-defining and structural element"; and su11 architecture+design's unbuilt Composite House prototype, whose interchangeable "add-ons" let the homeowner "personally design the house" and eliminate "the traditional design hierarchies." The chapter is the Marinic Reader's production-based register of interior architecture — and the only one whose direction of travel is integration rather than distinction: "the resultant form exists as an equalization of all elements."

Key Claims

The omission thesis: modern prefabrication's century of literature "has contained a notable omission" — the interior — although "prefabrication in the built environment owes much of its advancement to concepts investigated in terms of interior architectural elements and components." The evolution of the prefab house "decidedly includes the development of ideas and integration of prefabricated interior components." See prefab-interior, historiography-of-the-interior.
Prefabrication's attention persists "for reasons of efficiency and affordability of construction coupled with a current shift toward, or return to, sustainable technologies, designs, and environments."
The Manning Portable Colonial Cottage (introduced 1833 in England, shipped to Australia) is "the first documented prefabricated house"; it considered only the building envelope — "the advent of interior prefabricated elements within the prefabricated house would soon follow."
Singular prefab interior elements preceded complete assemblages: the Sears, Roebuck kit houses' "interior lining that was essentially an early form of gypsum" reduced construction time and could "replace internal partitions made of traditional lath and plaster"; Frank Lloyd Wright "installed a prefabricated frieze in his own home and studio in Oak Park, Illinois." See kit-of-parts.
Fuller's Dymaxion Bathroom (1936) is the early complete interior prefab assemblage: four stamped sheet-metal sections, tub/shower plus lavatory/toilet modules, "all contained within five square feet of floor space and weighing only about as much as a conventional bathtub" — "a forerunner that influentially fueled the subsequent specialty prefabrication market" and "a precursor to the pod bathrooms currently being designed and installed in buildings today."
The chapter's three case houses share "the notion that prefabrication was as critical to the interior as it was to the exterior"; each is "uniquely representative of an interior architectonic that is integral to the design of the prefabricated structure as a whole."
Lustron House (introduced by Carl Strundtland, 1946): interior elements were "a system of prefabricated modular units that not only act as dividing or space-making elements, but also function as programmed space, shelving, cabinetry, closets, and vanities"; per Wolfe and Garfield, "Twenty percent of the wall space was devoted to such built-in cabinets, dressers, and closets, manufactured as complete units and plugged into the house at the building site." Modularization "brings a furnishing element to the level of programmed prefabricated space."
Lustron was "not the first example of a prefabricated steel home, but it was the first to embrace the materiality of prefabrication": predecessor steel prefabs (Armco-Ferro; the Motohome of 1933) kept traditional plaster/hardwood finishes inside, while the Lustron's interior wall panels and built-in furniture "were manufactured from the same porcelain-enameled steel panels that covered the exterior and roof, establishing a clear visual interior-to-exterior connection. The materials were experienced in their true form."
Inhabitation adapted to the material: "The homeowners, in many cases, embraced this unique metal finish, utilizing magnets throughout the interior."
The Lustron's interior "defined space and provided the living program": eight prefabricated cabinets and closets, a bedroom vanity wall unit "that eliminated the need to buy a clothes dresser," a built-in china cabinet "that formed the wall assemblage between the dinette and the kitchen" — plus mechanical innovations (built-in kitchen exhaust, an undercounter all-in-one dishwasher/clothes washer, "although apparently neither functioned especially well").
The Lustron was manufactured within a "closed system": everything "from windows to bathtubs, were designed specifically for the house"; structural elements could not be used in other homes nor theirs in others — a "serious limitation." The factory's cheap bathtub machine failed because the Lustron tub measured 5 ft 1.5 in against the standard 5 ft, requiring "twice as many tubs as the Lustron houses needed, which was impossible."
Lustron's downfall was engineering, not concept: "a true integration would have been in a structural connection between these prefabricated interior elements and the core construction of the house. This lack of appropriate engineering may have been one of the downfalls"; the framing system was "determined by Koch to be unnecessary," and his 1950 redesign "developed an integrated panel that acted simultaneously a structure, and interior and exterior surface." "The Lustron Company folded in 1950, and Koch's ideas never actualized beyond the drawing board." Still, "the integration and significant placement of the prefabricated components informed the evolution of the prefabricated interior."
Furniture House (Shigeru Ban): "Furniture House elevated the status of furniture from an object added to a room to a space-defining and structural element." Furniture House 1 was completed in 1995; five houses of the typology have been completed. See structural-furniture.
The Furniture House's genealogy is structural-experimental and social at once: it grew from the "Library of a Poet" (paper-tube truss plus floor-to-ceiling bookcases) where Ban "realized the possibility that furniture could be designed to serve as the primary structure," and "coupled his structural investigations with the tragedies of Japan's earthquakes – where falling furniture caused many casualties."
Ban "collaborated with a furniture manufacturer"; the components were "completely manufactured and finished, inside and out, off-site"; the furniture elements "function simultaneously as interior, exterior, and structure, containing insulating materials and having both interior and exterior finishes as necessary." "The construction of Furniture House reconceptualized the traditional hierarchy of building. In this design, the hierarchy is eliminated and 'furniture and house are one.'"
The Furniture House is "a conceptual, realized system for the construction of a house": a wood-frame, two-by-two typology "with enhanced strength," built on the furniture module (units 240 cm high, 90 cm wide — printed "90 meters" — 45 cm deep for bookcases, 70 cm for other units), each unit "approximately 80 kilograms so that a single person can move it." Benefits: "reduced site construction time, reduced leftover materials that require removal from the site, and a reduced amount of labor." "Off-site production was specifically chosen because building the structural furniture in a controlled environment permits a higher level of craft and efficiency." See production-stream, kit-of-parts.
Furniture House 2 was "a prototype for a two-story house": "The structural furniture on the first floor carries the load of the second floor, and second floor furniture elements carry the roof load."
Composite House (Ferda Kolatan and Erich Schoenenberger of su11 architecture+design): "an inherently flexible prefabricated housing system" in which organization and parts are integral and connected, "equally employed in both the interior architecture of the house and the exterior." The unbuilt prototype is "truly a culmination of this investigation." See add-on.
su11's prefabricated multi-programmed units — "Add-ons" — are "components designed in response to specific programmatic and atmospheric needs" carrying "the capacity to have walls, stairways, doors, or storage attached to them."
The system minimizes the shell: "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." A local contractor builds the "house skeleton" from wood or steel; "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"; 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."
Interior life is designed-in, not decorated-on: "Surface and texture are integral to the design, acknowledging the emotional connection people have with materials" (Blauvelt, quoted); "Color choices, typically considered a decorative finish, are integral to this project, applied largely as coding devices that define the planes and use of the elements." The house "celebrates everyday elements that are functionally critical to the interior of the home like stairs, cabinets, and storage spaces."
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."
The companion system Composite Architecture combines "furniture and architecture systems into inter-programmed space" (sofa/bed units, table/storage units): "purely interior prefabricated assemblages… without connection to an architecture" that "could be plugged into existing space to create true interior prefabrication," customizable via "an online interface" for "functionality, materials, and colors."
The comparative thesis: all three houses "exhibit a strong connection between interior and exterior and represent an evolution of the integration of prefabricated interior components within the prefabricated house"; all three consider "the notion of the prefabricated assemblage by means of programmed interior elements and space-making devices," with "interior elements… elevated for programmatic necessity rather than decoration." In the Furniture and Composite Houses the interior elements "have a further architectonic role as they are functionally the structure in addition to programmed interior space."
The gradation of integration: Lustron implied the interior–exterior–structure connection "through materiality and the space-making nature of the built-in units" (its built-ins never became structure; Koch's redesign "could be considered a precursor to a structural interior assemblage"); the Furniture House "questions the traditional hierarchy of design elements, elevating furniture to be the structural element without which the house would not exist"; the Composite House "is truly a culmination of this investigation. Each contain composite elements of interior, furniture, structure, and exterior. The traditional design hierarchies have been eliminated, and the resultant form exists as an equalization of all elements."
The sustainability payoff: "building off-site has demonstrated reduced material waste and labor costs, while the fabrication of modular, transportable, or interchangeable elements allows for adaptability and reuse, increasing the life of all the elements. Further investigations into prefabrication of such interior elements by interior architects in a purposefully sustainable manner will continue to advance the significant territory of prefabricated interior architecture." See sustainability.

Connections

Concepts: prefab-interior · structural-furniture · add-on · kit-of-parts · interior-architecture · domestic-interior · flexible-interior · machine-for-living · production-stream · mass-customization · assemblage · fabrication · sustainability · adaptive-reuse · obsolescence · self-build · interior-design Authors: Deborah Schneiderman · Gregory Marinic (ed.) · Satterfield & Swackhamer (the production-stream sibling chapter) · Marc Manack (the fabricating counter-conception) · Michael Webb (the negative-space counter-conception) Debates: interior-design-vs-architecture — Position R: the prefab-interior claim, where the interior discipline's counter-argument is a production history architecture's own scholarship suppressed · static-vs-dynamic-architecture — the plug-in built-in and the interchangeable add-on as the factory-scale register of reconfigurable architecture Related source notes: Swimming upstream — both chapters reposition design inside production: where HouMinn repositions the designer along the stream (VarVac's variable mold), Schneiderman shows the interior already occupying production as prefab element; the two chapters share the off-site/factory-and-jobsite geography, though in opposite directions (Ban's craft argument moves production to the factory; HouMinn's moves production to the jobsite) · Fabricating interiority — Manack's interior intensifies its distinction from architecture, Schneiderman's integrates into the structure: the fabricating and prefab registers as the discipline's divergent production programs · Inside out — Webb's interior is the negative of the object received; Schneiderman's Lustron/Furniture/Composite houses make the interior the positive generator of the prefab house · Spatial therapies — Qureshi's "technological innovation through fabrication and material" tactic and sustainability register meet Schneiderman's off-site-waste/labor-costs argument · Territory and inhabitation — Campos's transferrable furniture-scale kit (Titlecase, Tailored) is the nomadic cousin of su11's pluggable Composite Architecture assemblages · A Christian House — the Beechers' rolling screen is the hand-moved ancestor of the prefab space-making element: partition, wardrobe and storage in one manufactured unit · Movement and Myth — the Schröder House's furniture-based transformable interior as the flexible-interior pole against which structural furniture (structure fixed by furniture) must be read · Spatial seductions — the assemblage connection: su11's "habitable puzzle" of "object, furniture, and space" and the chapter's "prefabricated assemblage" are the production-side twin of the mimetic assemblage register.

Direct Quotes

Page numbers are not available in the chapter text; quotes are located by paragraph content. Superscript footnote markers from the raw file are omitted.

"The investigation into modern prefabrication has enjoyed much attention in the architecture community for over a century, but until very recently, the literature documenting its significance has contained a notable omission." (opening)

"The techniques and applications of prefabrication of the interior have been evident for thousands of years. Prefabrication in the built environment owes much of its advancement to concepts investigated in terms of interior architectural elements and components, and thus it deserves closer examination." (opening)

"The evolution of the prefab house decidedly includes the development of ideas and integration of prefabricated interior components." (opening)

"Historically, prefabricated interior elements and constructions have been integral to the development of the prefabricated house." (opening)

"These three houses share the notion that prefabrication was as critical to the interior as it was to the exterior." (on the three typologies)

"Twenty percent of the wall space was devoted to such built-in cabinets, dressers, and closets, manufactured as complete units and plugged into the house at the building site." (Tom Wolfe and Garfield Leonard, quoted on the Lustron House)

"this modularization of the prefabricated parts brings a furnishing element to the level of programmed prefabricated space." (on the Lustron House)

"The Lustron House was certainly not the first example of a prefabricated steel home, but it was the first to embrace the materiality of prefabrication." (on the Lustron House)

"The interior wall panels and built-in furniture were manufactured from the same porcelain-enameled steel panels that covered the exterior and roof, establishing a clear visual interior-to-exterior connection. The materials were experienced in their true form…" (on the Lustron House)

"The homeowners, in many cases, embraced this unique metal finish, utilizing magnets throughout the interior." (on the Lustron House)

"As such, the interior elements defined space and provided the living program." (on the Lustron House)

"The elements and components of the structural system, including everything from windows to bathtubs, were designed specifically for the house. In what would ultimately amount to a serious limitation, structural elements meant for other homes could not be used for the Lustron House, nor could elements of the Lustron House be used in other homes." (on the closed system)

"In his 1950 redesign of the house, he developed an integrated panel that acted simultaneously a structure, and interior and exterior surface." (on Koch's redesign)

"The Lustron Company folded in 1950, and Koch's ideas never actualized beyond the drawing board." (on the Lustron's end)

"Furniture House elevated the status of furniture from an object added to a room to a space-defining and structural element." (on the Furniture House)

"In the design of Furniture House, Ban coupled his structural investigations with the tragedies of Japan's earthquakes – where falling furniture caused many casualties." (on the Furniture House's motivation)

"The construction of Furniture House reconceptualized the traditional hierarchy of building. In this design, the hierarchy is eliminated and 'furniture and house are one.'" (on the Furniture House)

"Off-site production was specifically chosen because building the structural furniture in a controlled environment permits a higher level of craft and efficiency." (on the Furniture House's production)

"The structural furniture on the first floor carries the load of the second floor, and second floor furniture elements carry the roof load." (on Furniture House 2)

"Add-ons, the architects' name for the prefabricated multi-programmed units, are 'components designed in response to specific programmatic and atmospheric needs.' Add-ons carry the capacity to have walls, stairways, doors, or storage attached to them." (on the Composite House)

"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." (on the Composite House)

"Each homeowner, through the selection and combination of their preferred add-ons, would then personally design the house." (on the Composite House)

"The elements are intended for manufacture with an epoxy finish, one that would wear equally well and meet the needs of both the interior and exterior environment, balancing them hierarchically." (on the Composite House)

"'Surface and texture are integral to the design, acknowledging the emotional connection people have with materials.'" (Andrew Blauvelt, quoted, on the Composite House)

"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." (on the Composite House)

"Color choices, typically considered a decorative finish, are integral to this project, applied largely as coding devices that define the planes and use of the elements." (on the Composite House)

"These elements are purely interior prefabricated assemblages and exist without connection to an architecture. The elements do not need to be used within a specific structure and could be plugged into existing space to create true interior prefabrication." (on Composite Architecture)

"The projects are uniquely interconnected through unified interior-exterior materials, while interior elements are elevated for programmatic necessity rather than decoration." (synthesis)

"The Furniture House, in particular, questions the traditional hierarchy of design elements, elevating furniture to be the structural element without which the house would not exist." (synthesis)

"Each contain composite elements of interior, furniture, structure, and exterior. The traditional design hierarchies have been eliminated, and the resultant form exists as an equalization of all elements." (synthesis)

"building off-site has demonstrated reduced material waste and labor costs, while the fabrication of modular, transportable, or interchangeable elements allows for adaptability and reuse, increasing the life of all the elements." (closing)

"Further investigations into prefabrication of such interior elements by interior architects in a purposefully sustainable manner will continue to advance the significant territory of prefabricated interior architecture." (closing)

Open Questions

The chapter's direction of travel is the inverse of Manack's fabricating register: where Manack's interior intensifies its distinction from architecture, Schneiderman's prefab interior integrates into structure and exterior ("an equalization of all elements"). Is the prefab register the fabrication conception's dialectical negation — or its completion, the interior fabricated all the way into the building?
The Lustron House failed commercially but pioneered the prefab interior; the Furniture House succeeded as an experimental typology (five built). Is the closed system (total design integration) structurally hostile to the mass-production economics prefab exists to serve — and is the open kit (Sears, su11) the only viable prefab interior?
When the interior surface is porcelain-enameled steel and inhabitation proceeds "utilizing magnets throughout the interior," is the magnet the industrial interior's equivalent of the picture rail and the pinboard — an inhabitation tactic invented by users against the finish (cf. appropriation)?
su11's homeowner "would then personally design the house" through add-on selection: is selection design (authorship distributed to the occupant, cf. self-build, right-to-design) or advanced catalogue-choice — and what does the online interface of Composite Architecture do to the authorship question?
The chapter claims interior elements are "elevated for programmatic necessity rather than decoration" — yet the add-ons' color-coding and texture are designed emotional surfaces. Is "programmatic necessity" the prefab register's version of the anti-decorative prejudice (the-decorative), or a genuine hierarchy-equalization in which decoration becomes structure?
Does the prefab interior generalize beyond the house? The Dymaxion Bathroom's pod-descendants and Composite Architecture's "plugged into existing space" elements suggest a public/commercial branch — what would a prefab-interior account of the office kit of parts (skyscraper-interior) or the waiting room (waiting-room) add?
The chapter is published in an interior-architecture reader but its cases are architect-authored houses (Koch/Strundtland, Ban, su11) — is the prefab interior the register where interior architecture and architecture most completely merge, and does that merge strengthen or dissolve the discipline's claim (interior-design-vs-architecture)?

Notes

The chapter is Chapter 15 of The Interior Architecture Reader (ed. Gregory Marinic, Routledge, 2018) — following Hollis (1), Deyong (2), La Coe (3), Qureshi (4), Webb (5), Stokes-Rees (6), Taylor (7), Teston (8), Manack (9), Campos (10), Satterfield & Swackhamer (11), McClure & McClure (12), Hedges (13), and Meninato (14). It is the third practitioner-authored theory chapter after Webb's "Inside out" and Manack's "Fabricating interiority" — and, with Satterfield & Swackhamer's "Swimming upstream," one of the Reader's production-centered chapters.
The chapter is an outgrowth of Schneiderman's own monograph Inside Prefab: The Ready-Made Interior (Princeton Architectural Press, 2012), cited as the chapter's note 1 (pp. 8–11) for the framing of prefab's efficiency/affordability/sustainability attention.
The chapter cites, among others: Colin Davies, The Prefabricated Home (2005) on the Manning Portable Colonial Cottage and the pod bathroom; Stevenson & Jandl, Houses by Mail (1986) on the Sears kit houses; Hatch, Buckminster Fuller: At Home in the Universe (1974) on the Dymaxion Bathroom; Knerr, Suburban Steel (2004) and Fetters, The Lustron Home (2002) on the Lustron Corporation; Wolfe & Leonard, "'A New Standard for Living': The Lustron House, 1946–1950" (Perspectives in Vernacular Architecture 3, 1989) — the quoted "Twenty percent of the wall space" claim; Jandl, Burns & Auer, Yesterday's Houses of Tomorrow (1991); Koch & Lewis, At Home With Tomorrow (1958) on the 1950 integrated-panel redesign; McQuaid, Shigeru Ban (2003) and Miyake, "Shigeru Ban as an Empiricist" (The Japan Architect 30, 1998) on the Furniture House; su11 Architects' own project page (2008) and Blauvelt, Strangely Familiar (2003) on the add-ons; Kieran & Timberlake, Refabricating Architecture (2004) in the final note.
The raw text carries residual footnote markers ( $^n$ ) and two figure captions (15.1, the Lustron interior, referenced but not captioned in the file; 15.2, "Furniture House 2 exploded axonometric depicting structural furniture elements: Shigeru Ban Architects"); the Composite House's Figure 15.3 (the "habitable puzzle") is referenced in the text but its caption is not reproduced in the file. The Furniture House module width is printed "90 meters wide" (evidently 90 centimetres).
The chapter's own attribution of the Lustron House to "Carl Strundtland" follows the chapter text as given; standard sources give the Lustron founder's name as Carl Strandlund (the discrepancy is in the source, not corrected here).