Prefabricated Housing

Report Outline
Dawn of Mass Production Era in Housing
Cost Factors in Factory Process Housing
Industrialized Building: Fast, Present, Future

Dawn of Mass Production Era in Housing

Prefabricated Homes and Community Buildings

Home Building, the mass-market industry that has clung most tenaciously to handicraft methods of the pre-industrial age, is at last being converted to mass production and there are many indications that the factory process will become of increasing importance to house construction in the years ahead. Not only is there growing public acceptance of the so-called “prefabricated” house, but factory methods are being successfully adapted to conventional on-site construction. More and more essential parts are being manufactured in finished form for use not only by erectors of factory-built housing but also by regulation builders.

Contrary to earlier expectations, prefabrication has not supplied low-income families with suitable housing at cut prices. But neither has it justified earlier fears that prefabrication would cover the nation's cities and suburbs with unimaginative, flimsy cracker-box dwellings of dull uniformity. On the whole, the factory-built house has the charm, sturdiness, and utility demanded by most families, and its price and quality are roughly comparable with those of houses built piece by piece.

The chief effect to date of the technological revolution in housing has been to raise standards of efficiency, precision engineering, and design in middle-priced homes. At the same time the factory process has helped to hold the price line against inflationary factors, with the result that many features formerly available only in high-priced, custom-built homes are now found in the moderate-to-low price range.