{"id":1007,"date":"2017-03-14T17:05:42","date_gmt":"2017-03-14T17:05:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/prefarch.it\/cold-formed-steel-and-building-mass-housing\/"},"modified":"2017-03-14T17:05:42","modified_gmt":"2017-03-14T17:05:42","slug":"cold-formed-steel-and-building-mass-housing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.prefarch.it\/en\/cold-formed-steel-and-building-mass-housing\/","title":{"rendered":"COLD FORMED STEEL AND BUILDING MASS HOUSING"},"content":{"rendered":"

T<\/em>h<\/em>e mass housing revolution that never was. <\/em>The web version CNN Style (1) uses this title to introduce Jean Prouv\u00e8, great leader of the mass housing revolution. Prouv\u00e8\u2019s revolution (2), between the 1930s and 1950s, was an amazing research into prefabricated steel houses: an ethical conception of form applied to mass housing, where terms like mass production (each building is designed as a repeatable prototype), flexibility of use, transformability (without demolition), demountable\/reversible, are associated with architecture for the first time.<\/p>\n

A research that crashed against the \u2018excessive power of reinforced concrete\u2019(patriotic material) and heavy prefabrication, due to political choices that, as happened in our country after the Second World War with the Fanfani Plan (3), preferred high employment over innovation. Today the evolution of Cold Formed Steel is a descendent of Prouv\u00e8\u2019s highly advanced studies, and is an innovative technology used for the production and installation of light steel frames, often little more than a millimetre thick, to build the primary\/secondary structure of buildings based on the S\/C system (structure\/cladding) that is the paradigm of stratified dry construction (4).<\/p>\n

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This technology has been widely used for many years in countries where steel has a well-affirmed construction tradition, \u00a0like the USA, Canada, Japan, Australia, and which now, way behind the others, is beginning to spread in our country as well thanks to certain companies that are investing in research and innovation (5). A declination of steel which, in parallel with the high-tech connotation of numerous constructions in recent years based on the formalist glorification of mechanical details, demonstrates how it can be widely used even in low-cost contexts (6). It is important to underline (following the tone of the CNN document) that Prouv\u00e8\u2019s failed revolution is far removed from the utopian nature of certain historic vanguards. On the contrary: it is almost an opposition to certain formalist (anti-constructive) and modernist (Prouv\u00e8\u2019s famous comment on Breuer\u2019s famous tubular steel chairs: \u201cthere are just vermicelli\u201d) vanguards, and should be intended in the most profound sense as a (possible) answer from a (design) culture that acquires and innovates methods (the building industry) to respond to historically determined demands, limitations and needs (economic-social context\/housing demand).<\/p>\n

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This consideration leads to certain reflections and questions about today. After the post-modernist, deconstructive tide and, above all, after the crisis (not just economic) of architecture-spectacle at the turn of the century, when Global style translates the Pasolini style approval into architecture, can a design concept be recomposed as a knowledge process with respect to the economic-material context (limitations, resources, aims) that can lead form discipline (architecture) to a (new) principle of responsibility?<\/p>\n

Or is the innovation of production and construction processes caused by the so-called digital revolution, just an artifice for achieving free forms, whose reason for existence lies in their formal autonomy, or can building industry innovation determine planning that is aware of the costs-benefits, resources and formal quality? Prouv\u00e8 began a processus du travail that lead from the design to the prototype and finally to mass production. After repeated perfections (that were so experimental they were submitted for patents), and constantly returning to the drawing board and workshop, the steel industry produced rolls of steel sheet four meters wide and with a varying thickness between 10 and 25\/10\u00b0, which was welded, bent, beaten, punched, crimped, bolted to become pillars, girders, sheds, walls, stairs, windows, panels and, finally, houses. A limited small scale series that would now be called mass customization. Today this sort of \u2018integrated\u2019 processus du travail coincides with the BIM (7) (Building Information Modelling) method, combining production and building management: due to software evolution it seems more practical for there to be interactivity between the phases and the experts, addressed to a close dialogue between conception, planning, production and building construction and management, regeneration or demolition\/dismantling at the end of the life cycle. It now seems highly relevant that industrial production is increasingly less standardized (catalogue production) and more and more customized (mass customization), further to the use of numeric control machinery, using continuously developing CAD\/CAM processes, and a file generated in the architect\u2019s office (file to factoryviii. It is clear how innovation in materials technology and management and calculation software must be integrated in order to move the more professional players in the country: universities, architects and enterprise, driven by political and economic policies pursuing a \u201cnew realism\u201dix, to trigger what is now an unavoidable evolution in the building industry, reconnecting research, project and building. To close, I wonder if it is still logical to continue with a self-centred university? One that lives in its own world and is cut off from reality; with architectural micro-studies with lead on their wingsx; with \u2018entrepreneurs\u2019 who still act as if they were in the 50s-60s- (but in a highly different economic and social context!) when in fact we need \u2018entrepreneurs\u2019 who acquire techniques able to regenerate\/build the houses we live in. Combine construction system innovation (CFS) and production process and building management (BIM) is an exceptional development opportunity for the building sector, first cultural then technical, that universities, architects,industry and enterprise should grasp. The mass housing revolution is now!<\/p>\n

by Diego De Nardi<\/p>\n

[AAA\u00a0n\u00b065\/2016]<\/p>\n

(1)<\/p>\n

By Fiona Sinclair Scott, CNN, and Sophie Eastaugh, for CNN http:\/\/edition.cnn.com\/2016\/06\/13\/architecture\/jean-prouve-pre-fab-housing.<\/p>\n

(2) On Prouv\u00e8 see in particular D. De Nardi, Jean Prouv\u00e8, Idee costruttive, Torino 2001; D. De Nardi, Jean Prouv\u00e8. Il faut des\u00a0maisons usin\u00e9es. Le baraques in acciaio di Jean Prouv\u00e9 (1901-1984) in AAA N\u00b019\/2004.<\/p>\n

(3)\u00a0For a full analysis of the housing policies in the Fanfani Plan (1949) see P. Di Biagi (edited by), La Grande ricostruzione.\u00a0Il Piano Ina-Casa e l\u2019Italia degli anni cinquanta, Roma 2001.<\/p>\n

(4)\u00a0On dry construction see M. Imperadori, Stratified dry construction, Module n. 273\/2001, Milan 2001; M. Imperadori, La meccanica dell\u2019architettura, Milan 2010; Matter n. 37\/2002; Arketipo 3\/2010. Also see D. De Nardi, Per una figurativit\u00e0 delle tecniche. Tre paradigmi della costruzione a secco, in AAA n\u00b057\/2014.<\/p>\n

(5)\u00a0I refer in particular to Cogi S.p.A, which financed a research project with Trento University to verify the energy and structural efficiency of the patented CFS system. Cogi is also promoting a partnership with the PrefArch Group \u2013 Prefabrication Architecture (www.prefarch.it) to develop architectural models and prototypes.<\/p>\n

(6)\u00a0For this see in particular G. Morabito, R. Bianchi, La decrescita prosperosa dell\u2019edificio, Rome 2010.<\/p>\n

(7) \u00a0\u201cBIM is not a thing nor a type of software, but a human activity that involves, first and foremost, broad changes to the building sector processes.\u201d In C. Eastman, P. Teicholz, R. Saks, K. Liston, in Il BIM trad. it. Edited by G. M. Di Giuda and V. Villa, Milan 2016.<\/p>\n

(8)\u00a0On the relationship between architecture and digital production see in particular: C. Abel, Architecture Technology and\u00a0Process, London 2004; B. Kolarevic, Architecture in the Digital Age: Design and Manufacturing, London 2003.<\/p>\n

(9)\u00a0I use new realism with the meaning given by Maurizio Ferraris, as an acknowledgement of a changing season, after historic experience of mediatic populisms, of wars after 11 September and the recent economic crisis, and the great challenges, ethics and politics we are faced with. Quote: M. Ferraris, Nuovo realismo, Milan 2015.<\/p>\n

(10)\u00a0Quote: V. Gregotti, Il piombo sulle ali, Casabella n.607\/93<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The mass housing revolution that never was. The web version CNN Style (1) uses this title to introduce Jean Prouv\u00e8, great leader of the mass housing revolution. Prouv\u00e8\u2019s revolution (2), between the 1930s and 1950s, was an amazing research into prefabricated steel houses: an ethical conception of form applied to mass housing, where terms like […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1128,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[28,38,39,40,41],"class_list":["post-1007","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized-en","tag-prouve-en","tag-dry-construction","tag-cold-formed-steel-en","tag-bim-en","tag-mass-customization-en"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prefarch.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1007","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prefarch.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prefarch.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prefarch.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prefarch.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1007"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.prefarch.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1007\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prefarch.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1128"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prefarch.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1007"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prefarch.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1007"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prefarch.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1007"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}