Speed has always been a powerful word in the construction industry. It has paved the way for new technology, both low and high tech, cheap and expensive, low and high quality. Speed has also been key in shaping post disaster, post war, and rapidly developing areas. Prefabrication, historically has been the answer to these three great problems. That said, the innovative technology that many masterminds have come up with rarely sticks with prefabrication, unfortunately due mostly to cost.

The speed in construction came from a necessity to solve a problem. These problems throughout the ages have been as  varied as the solutions. The article 100 Years of Humanitarian Design catalogs the many prefabricated housing designs which made a mark on history. What it doesn’t catalog however is what can be called the final chapter, the slum dwelling. It is the culmination of all the different types prefabricated houses; including both good and bad qualities. As a lead up to this cumulative prefabricated housing typology, a background of its predecessors is in store.

To begin, an earthquake in the early 1900’s destroyed much of San Francisco. The answer to the housing lose problem was to supply its population with small prefabricated rentable wooden cottages. Worried about permanent squatters in the city’s parks, San Francisco set up a system where renters of the cottages would become owners if they moved them from the city’s parks onto a permanent lot. Several years later 5,343 of the original 5,610 had been relocated; solving multiple problems in one foul swoop.

Another example of prefabricated housing is the Sears house. These houses were available starting in 1908 and ending in 1940 and sold nearly 100,000 homes. These houses could be put up in about 90 days with around 30,000 parts delivered by train car. These models shined in both ease of constructability and quality of the end product. In addition these houses cost only a fraction of the average early to mid century home.

The last example of prefabricated house that will be covered was developed by futurist Buckminster Fuller called the Dymaxion House. Rethinking the conventional house which made “no structural advances in 5,000 years” Fuller designed a house which made efficient use of both materials and structure.This house although seemingly unrelated to the slums of today has one thing in common. The fact that it requires next to no maintenance (the outside of the Dymaxion House is clad in aluminum).

The slums of the world should be categorized as prefabrication in its most crude sense. As a way of further understanding this notion, consider what prefabrication means to the building; cheap, readily available materials, and easy to construct. This aligns almost directly with the dynamic assembly of a slum.

First, Most, if not all slum building materials are found materials; plywood, cinder-blocks, corrugated metal for example, making them both cheap and easy to obtain near and around slums. In addition, the construction of slums is done by the squatters  themselves, obviously this dictates them very easy to construct. To reiterate, the common slum dwelling is in essence the next chapter in cheap, disposable, movable, pseudo temporary housing, akin to a double wide trailer. The most important thing to note is that each and every new version of temporary housing typology was designed to solve a problem.

1) 100 Years of Humanitarian Design

2) Slums and Urbanization

3) PREVI-Lima