Since the early twentieth century the discussion surrounding the
streamlined use of industrialized building systems followed two confronting trajectories:
the benefits of standardization and the horrors of standardization. The
acknowledged idea that a certain amount of standardization was essential for
easing production was repeatedly challenged with the similarly accepted argument
that normalization reduced the potential for a rich built environment. Further,
a number of theorists argued that standardization would lead to a small
number of producers taking control of the market reducing the potential
for a shared building culture leading to quality degradation and monotonous
buildings.
Looking to address these longstanding questions, Laurence Stephan Cutler
and Sherrie Stephens Cutler argued in 1974 for an open construction strategy,
which would lead to an efficient, intelligible and collaborative building
system for housing construction. Their Ecologic
building system was a reaction to closed loop systems reasoning that open
systems based on prefabricated assemblies and components could be distributed objectively.
The system considered three progressive scales and deployed grid modularization
toward a great number of design variants. Standardized parts complied with the
dimensionally strict and coordinated grid. Building on this idea of system
scalability, components were proposed for each project scope: Honeycomb wood
structural panels for single-family dwellings, lightweight easy to assemble
cold-formed nailable steel framing for low-rise collective housing and a hybrid
of off-site and onsite half-tunnel concrete formwork system for large
collective housing blocks. The three basic structural strategies or
building blocks were part of a larger conceptual framework evoking an
industrialized kit of parts capable of generating quality buildings for the
masses.
Identified as a necessary approach to allow user flexibility and
adaptability the authors pursued a form of do-it-yourself language for
architecture. Inspired by a particularly fertile time in the development of
industrialized building project stimuli (operation breakthrough, In cities
technology) the Ecologic system was more of a design process promoting the use
of a grid to achieve variable plans. The strict standardization required by the
system’s inventors would allow freedom in planning, however the regular
components hardly would allow for some sort of material differentiation
returning us to same basic debate of how to standardize without dictating form.
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| Three scales of development - Ecologic Building System |
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