A HOUSE IN NINE HOURS

New Zealand Listener, Volume 8, Issue 192, 26 February 1943, Page 4

A HOUSE IN NINE HOURS

E glanced at the report on the \ x competition for pre-fabricated houses as we made our way up to Parliament Buildings to see the exhibition of plans. "Better houses ... Cheaper... quicker to construct ... less wasteful in construction . . . smaller proportion of skilled labour needed .. ." It sounded like good news to towns where people are overcrowded, where the housing shortage means high rents, where old houses are persistently cut up into flats unsuited for young children, where even the promise of new houses after the war depends on the supply of skilled labour still available to construct them. A small group of people had collected round the prize-winning plans by R. T. Walker and Paul Pascoe, of Christchurch. Someone was pointing out the merits of pre-fabrication. "You see, it’s like this," he said. "All the pieces of the house are made on a large scale in the factories. Here you can see the plans for all the pieces that are needed for this house. There is a piece of the outside wall with ‘22 Thus’ written underneath it. Well, 22 pieces like that will be needed. There is a piece of the wall with a casement window ‘9 Thus." Another piece here has the safe attached, Here are the doors, and here are the plans for the inside walls and doors. All these pieces can be loaded on to the truck just as you see it in the picture there, and driven to the section. Then four carpenters and three labourers get going and all they need to do is to fit all the pieces together. There you have the house as it looks by the time they knock off in the evening-done in nine hours’ working time." (see photographs). "Just Like Bombers" "Like the bombers that they are building," said some one. "If they can do it with aeroplanes and ships for the war, why not for houses for us to live in in peace time?" "What I like, said an elderly mother-in-law, "is that there aren’t any bits of timber and things cluttering up the section for weeks. When my daughter’s house was built there were men working on the place for months, and ever such a lot of bits of wood and things were stolen, and there was a lot of waste. If they know just exactly how much timber is needed at the factory and it is supplied from the timber mills, well, it must be cheaper!" "Certainly," said the first speaker, "that is one of the points. Besides, in the factories a lot of the work can be done by unskilled men, or at least they can learn how to make a part of the house skilfully in a short time. That is why this competition is run by the Rehabilitation Committee--more work for men to do when they get back, and more houses for them to live in." Even a Pram Garage! It sounds all right, we thought, but we looked for the flies in the ointment, (Continued on next page) —

What Pre-Fabricated Building Means

(Continued from previous page) "The houses look small, and aren’t the rcoms lower ceilinged than is at present allowed in housing specifications?" "That is so, but look how handy this plan is! It allows for everything. There is plenty of built-in furniture, cupboards in the kitchen, a linen press, a tray rack in the dining alcove, a coat cupboard and, look, there is a pram garage in the back hall, just off the back door." "I like the outside appearance of these houses better," said the elderly woman, moving on to the plans that won the second prize. "A street of these with all the variations which he gives would Jook really nice." Houses Like Eggs Under one set of plans was a curious exhibit that looked not unlike the round apple money-box which we once treasured-only the split for the pennies was too wide. Then we saw that the spheres were not separated, but that four spheres clustered round a central sphere, "Looks as though a hen laid Siamese quints," said the mother-in-law... "What on earth is it?" "Here are the plans, The houses aren’t built exactly. They are made from pulped wood into a sort of plastic. Here is a piece of it. The advantage is that the whole tree can be pulped down and then shaped into spheres. The centre is the living room with doors leading out, and the other egg-shaped rooms that lead out are three bedrooms and a bathroom, The kitchen is cut out of a central room, All the rooms are round -no corners to sweep out." "I saw something like it at the pictures once," said a young man. "The houses we saw there were made by inflating balloons and then spraying concrete on to them." The female section of onlookers was’ more doubtful. Even the advantage of a house guaranteed earthquake-proof hardly compensated for the disadvantage of emerging from a clutch of eggs every morning. All the same, some admitted that new ideas were quite good things to try on other people. : * * * URTHER down the hall we looked at other types of things that could be pre-fabricated. There were pre-cast units of construction, and plans for joinery, sashes and frame doors, and other details of carpentry and plumbing. There were also drawings for pre-fab-ricated furniture. No more frenzied searches for any house, any fittings, any furniture. The future house-hunter may order his house and furniture on Monday, buy his section on Tuesday, have his house assembled on Wednesday, plumbing and guttering on Thursday, furniture assembled on Friday, and wife and family installed on Saturday. That's moving for you! We had by this time wandered back to our starting point. A new cluster of people had again gathered. "I don’t like the house standing all by itself on the section," said one. "Now what about pre-fabricated gardens, too?" "I guess there’s no pleasing some women," said our guide dryly, as he left the hall. "They'll be wanting pre-fabri-cated children next."