Wood house of the future - Project for architectural quality in industrialized wood house construction (PhD project)

 

The aim of the project is to develop construction of wood-built houses satisfying the need for a general, but still individual, dwelling of architectural quality in the form of mass-produced solutions at attractive prices.

Through history, dwellings and the good quality of these have been the architect's most distinguished task. An example in architecture of an intelligent use of industrially made components for dwellings is the Charles and Ray Eames House in California from the 1940s. A simple structure of steel profiles and a disciplined plan result in a robust system that can cope with variations in the form of balconies, staircases and combinations of the different components of the construction industry without disintegrating. Utzon's Espansiva building system from the late 1960s was another proposal for industrialized buildings with inherent architectural quality.   

Due to these innovative proposals for a form of industrialized buildings, the construction industry has adopted a practice in which prefab elements for slabs and load-bearing back walls together with ready-made bathroom cabins, kitchen equipment, windows, and light dividing systems for partitions and pendent ceilings can be used without any problems. This industrialization can result in simplification and mass-produced houses at low prices, which is positive. However, it is often the case that the design, the architectural quality, is confined by the production system - which unfortunately was the case in many of the buildings in the 1960s and 1970s.

Today, it is a huge challenge to solve the dilemma between being able to make individual and unique expensive dwellings of architectural quality, and mass-produced low-price dwellings in which architecture is added as external ornaments. This implies new types of dwellings in which - besides increased productivity - also architectural qualities are ensured: More spacious and flexible dwellings, increased comfort, more sustainable solutions and new means of expression, like previous times where Eames and Utzon provided new solutions for the building systems of that period.

The project is performed in cooperation with Hjem as.