May_1965 — Page 22

INDUSTRIALISED BUILDING

Prefabricated Architecture

OR

Architectural Prefabrication

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Window unit of Coignet system being positioned

TIS estimated that only a quar- ter of the world's population of over 3,000 million is properly hous- ed. No matter how massive are housing programmes the inroads on this percentage are small and it would seem inevitable, especially in South East Asia with its growing demands for a higher standard of amenity, that we must turn more and more to the industrialisation of building.

For the architect with a sense of community welfare, this poses fur- ther problems. For he is concern- ed with emotions which urge him towards a more human approach to architecture and a more subtle and sophisticated approach to materials and building techniques.

If architecture is for the service of

man, it will serve us well through industrialisation, for we must take into account quality and low cost, high labour costs (not yet a factor in the East, but it is a matter of time), health standards, the time factor and transportation. But the risk here involved is of mechanisation taking command be- cause of economy and efficiency, at the expense of enjoyability.

In other words there is a danger of architecture from cataloques.

Sir William Holford has said "as prefabrication increases, architectur- al skill becomes more necessary". After all nothing has changed much

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External finishes on Bossard project

in the character of man; he is still in love with nature and liberty. Therefore, if architecture is for the

joy of man, he and not economy and efficiency should dominate the shape and quality of architecture.

Precast concrete has been develop- ed in the past few decades from the production of simple structural ele- ments and claddings for one-purpose buildings to a more complex struc- tural prefabrication for big housing projects in East and West Europe.

Precasting can now mean the subdivision of a building into re- latively small sections which can be prefabricated and then skilfully joined together to form both a structural and an architectural unity.

This method comes under the general term of "industrialised building". It is already in use in Malaysia and no doubt similar sys- tems to those employed there will soon make their mark in other Far East territories. It may therefore be of interest in studying the ques- tion of how quantity and architec- tural quality are to be related, for me to present here a study which I made a few years ago in France of two approaches to prefabrication.

One is a description of a complete system for factory-made homes, the Coignet system, and the other deals with a particular project where an architect designed and supervised the precasting, done on site.

The

methods of

construction Coignet use are the methods of manufacture employed by the most advanced industries applied to the problem of building construction: these methods have been used in the construction of a large number of buildings in France for the past 20 years and more recently abroad.

THE COIGNET SYSTEM

However, the system only repre- sents another stage of a long jour- ney continued from 1892, when pre- cast concrete was invented by Ed- mond Coignet. The road continues and leads year after year to an im- provement of different methods of construction, of use of materials, of creation and design of equipments and the scientific organization of work.

Engineers continue untiringly to apply themselves to study and re- search to try and find out an even more economical and efficient solu- tion, but without much considera- tion of the architectural problem. The result is one which tends greater and greater industrialization in building construction.

to

The general principles governing their methods are: To carry out the maximum amount of construction in the factory, and to reduce the func- tion of the construction site to that of simple erection.

Far East Architect & Builder May, 1965