The best thing about writing is that it forces you to read more. I'm fortunate that architect Marta Cervelló, author of important books and publications and Josep Lluís Mateo's right-hand woman for many years, left me a wonderful little book she bought in London, which has allowed me to learn a story I'll use to address an important architectural dilemma.
In the publication Prefab Men, by Elisabeth Blanchet, captures the built legacy of the 1944 Temporary Housing Program, promoted by Winston Churchill at the end of the war and which aimed to deliver 300,000 units over 10 years, with a budget of 150 million pounds. Houses like cars, mass-produced, by the thousands, to install them quickly and keep costs down. Now, Salvador Illa's 50,000 homes seem like a lot, but Churchill had set out to build 300,000 in four years! He built approximately half that number, 165,000, in six years. In the midst of the post-war period.
They started from the premise that families had high expectations (everyone wanted household appliances and indoor toilets, a kitchen, a refrigerator, and heating)… but these expectations were homogeneous, because after the war, with so much misery and destruction, everyone became a broadly middle class. In 1951, a third of British homes didn't have a bathroom with running water; it's easy to imagine that the new bungalows implied very high standards.
The production of the modules also involved a specific economic policy: prefabrication using machinery was a way to employ workers without technical training and create secure and stable jobs.
Prefabricated houses were built throughout the United Kingdom: the London County Council promoted Mobiles in London between 1963 and 1977, but they were demolished in the 1990s because they had asbestos walls. Architect Frederick Gibberd and engineer Donovan Lee designed them for the British Iron and Steel Federation Houses (BISF) company, with excellent quality: 30,000 units were built in Yorkshire, two-story, with a steel frame and light steel panels. Some are still standing today. Also successful was the Swedish house model, originating in Sweden and Finland and imported during the 1940s (5,000 units were imported). They were made of heavy wood panels and had cladding on the inside and outside. Some are still in operation in Scotland, Dodcaster, Kent, and Hampshire and are quite attractive, painted green and with pitched roofs.
The story does not end very well, because the victory of Margaret Thatcher (1979-1990) equated the family moral model to private property and began selling public assets (45,000 units in two years) and approving the famous Housing Act of 1980, which allowed for the sale of more than one million public housing units to residents, without replacing them with new units. Thatcher established herself as the queen of privatization and gave tenants the right to purchase public housing at a discount, based on the length of their time lived in it and at a cost proportional to its market value. She undoubtedly set a trend. A disastrous precedent for a Spain that quickly imitated it to avoid the difficult management of public assets.
All this to share what happened next. In the 1960s, English prefabricated modules in suburban neighborhoods with large gardens were no longer the solution, and the authorities shifted their housing projects to demolition and replacement operations with large towers and high-density blocks in city centers: the new industrial estates or Housing estatesThey weren't as successful as the prefabricated houses: they were never the "palaces for the people" Churchill had envisioned. People wanted low-rise houses with gardens and light-filled interiors, even if they were objectively smaller than the new ones and were very cold during the winter. So much so that, in many municipalities, the modules have been preserved to this day, with only the sandwich-panel walls replaced with brick fixtures and better windows. It was the residents who gave a long life to the temporary homes initially designed to last only 10 years.
And that's the dilemma I'm posing. Plots of highly variable capacity have been registered in the public land reserve for Plan 50,000. Some are land grants in small-scale operations, which for many years were considered "unviable." Yet, many people prefer to live in a small house or a two- or three-story tower rather than in a block of 50 apartments. This diversity of plots of all sizes that have now emerged with the reserve may be an opportunity to reconsider whether social housing cannot be achieved with smaller housing units, especially in towns and cities with low-rise built environments. Perhaps there is room for industrialization here as well.
