Houses Like Snails

Prefabricated housing has meant many different things to many different people. Architects have designed prefabricated all-steel trailer houses, houses that would come in packages, factory-built "bubble" houses looking like brimless derbies. Prefabrication has been steadily bedeviled by technicalities, the economics of production, building trades' obstructionism, public unconcern. But every once in a while poor, young prefabrication makes news. Last week the Government approved another prefabrication project for defense housing (it had already approved 40 others). The designers: U.S. Architect Paul Lester Wiener, Spain's Town Planner Jose Luis Sert.

Their design is intended for large-scale building projects where changes in the plan or the use of the structures may be likely or desirable. They call their development "Ratio Structures" and have completed a full scale sample in The Bronx. Built on small concrete piers, it is unique in having its framework, like a snail's, on the outside. The structure is composed of two practically independent parts: 1) an arch-shaped roof made of insulated panels and supported by posts; 2) rooms, formed of demountable inner & outer panels* which can be shuffled around at will under the roof. Thus the structure has no weight-carrying walls.

In a few minutes two wall shufflers with a hammer and a screwdriver can:

>Change the structure's floor plan.

>Open a porch on any side. >Convert a big room into little ones or vice versa.

Thus Ratio Structures used as men's dormitories could easily be converted into married men's single homes if need be. Large units could be changed to meet the requirements of homes, hospitals, recreation centers, storage, schools, etc.

*Under wartime restrictions the panels are made of celotex and wallboard. But they could be made of any material. Having no weight-carrying walls, the Wiener-Sert system uses only about 50% of the structural lumber and 80% of the metal permitted by WPB.

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