Prefabrication and Architecture

Architects have been captivated prefabrication since the Industrial Revolution revealed the benefits of mechanized human labor. This undergraduate project seminar will examine the provenance and relevance of prefabrication. We will consider the prefabricated traditions of Africa and Asia as the foundation for the discipline of “vernacular architecture”; and conceptualize prefab as a technology of colonial expansion, solution to the postwar housing crisis, expression of 1960s counterculture, and response to climate change. Case studies will be drawn from Africa, Australia, Asia, Europe, and North America. A