No_4_December_1964 — Page 115

'INSTANT' HOUSING BOOMS

A building boom is being held up

in some parts of Britain by a shortage of bricks because last winter was mild, and work was not inter- rupted by snow and rain as much as usual. Unexpected progress was made, and stocks of materials were run down.

This year however, will be a record one for British building despite the bricks shortage. In future the industry is not going to be so dependent on the weather.

Already housing components, and even entire houses, are being made in factories. In extreme cases, a pre- fabricated house can be assembled on the site in 24 hours and all services laid on within a week.

First Difficulties

Britain long ago produced the sys- tem of school building, using pre- fabricated walls, columns, beams and partitions. But the example was not immediately followed in housing.

House building was largely in the hands of small and medium-sized firms, which were neither technically nor financially equipped for experi- ment. Also, it was widely believed that pre-fabrication and standardisa- tion were not applicable to British housing.

These methods had proved suc- cessful in other European countries. But in those countries more people lived in flats, and flats lent themselves to industrialised building. In Britain, over half the local-authority building consists of houses, not flats; and of all the homes in the country about three-quarters are houses.

Over and above this, there was a prejudice against industrialised house building in Britain. even among architects. People thought of the typical concrete flats of France and Russia and equated pre-fabrication and standardisation with monotony.

The origin of the present revolu- tion in house building was the ap- pointment of Mr. Cleeve Barr as the

IN BRITAIN

Ministry of Housing's chief architect in 1960. Mr. Cleeve Barr set the Ministry's research and development group to developing a lightweight system of pre-fabricated parts for house building, quite distinct from the heavy continental systems.

The system now perfected is similar in principle to the "Clasp" system for school building. It is ex- tremely flexible, comprising many kinds of factory-made components that can be assembled in many dif- ferent ways.

The structure of the building is "hung" on a steel-and-timber frame. The outer walls

can be panels of timber, lightweight concrete or, in- deed, more or less any material. So far from being open to the charge of promoting monotony, the system affords much more variety than traditional British house building.

The break-through came in 1962. By this time Mr. Cleeve Barr's team had gone far enough with their re- search to know it would be success- ful. The first housing embodying the new system was to be completed at Sheffield in the following year.

A Necessity

was

By 1962, also, it was evident that industrialised house building going to be an economic necessity. The index of building costs of three- bedroomed council houses had gone up by 50 per cent. in ten years, and 15 per cent. of the increase had oc- curred in the previous year.

Labour costs, in particular, had become a problem. With full em- ployment and increasing affluence, ever higher wages were necessary to attract workers into an industry where the work was hard and it was often necessary to travel and be away from home during the week.

Moreover, the high wages paid to labourers reduced the differential with a craftsman's wages. Young men entering the industry began to feel it was not worth doing an ap

THE HONG KỌNG & FAR EAST BUILDER-VOLUME 19, NUMBER 4

prenticeship. A serious shortage of craftsman could be foreseen. Mechanisation was the logical answer to the problem--and mechanisation of house building means mainly pre- fabrication.

In October, 1962, the Minister of Housing and Local Government, Sir Keith Joseph. announced an ac- celerated slum-clearance drive based on the new techniques. About the same time, it became known that the London County Council was heavily committed to a programme of pre- fabrication for house building.

Sir Donald Shortly afterwards, Gibson was appointed to a new post as director general of research and development at the Ministry of Public Building and Works. Sir Donald had been responsible for rebuilding the bomb damaged city of Coventry. He had been associated with "Clasp".

Revolution

Quite suddenly, a revolution in house building looked inevitable. The manufacture of standardised com- ponents is economic only on a large scale, and before this time firms had hesitated to invest in it because they could not feel assured of a large market.

The confidence that now the market would be there constituted the break-through. Ever since then, British newspapers have been carry- ing reports of plastic and aluminium houses that can be erected in a day and towed by a car, and of blocks of flats made from pre-fabricated

and components

erected in nine instead of 15 months.

An Industrialised Building Systems and Components Exhibition was held recently at London's Crystal Palace. This displayed both "instant houses" and systems of standardised com- ponents employing new materials. Even two years ago, such an Exhibi- tion would have been unthinkable.

Needless to say, the Exhibition itself was erected in record time.

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