Abstract

Standardized modular building systems (Abbreviated Abstract as SMDS in the following) provided the perfect solution to the post-WWII explosion of population globally. Until now, it is still the default choice in most social housing project for it is economic, efficient, and reliable. It incorporates a technology that fulfills the citizen’s right to dwell decently and thus makes possible a sublimation of our Utopian hopes. While SMDS is a magic wand for policymakers to solve the housing crisis, its standardization has caused social, cultural, and political problems in cities for the homogeneity it generates – in most cases, such homogeneity equals a taken-for-granted form of minimalism, which in turn shows an ignorance of the culture and history of the site. And as the culture and history are flattened, SMDS becomes an ahistorical and uncultured object, losing its ability to communicate with its dwellers. This thesis, Post-Standardization, probes specifically into standardized prefabricated façade panels and balconies in social housing projects and aims to create a design process where individual preferences and choices are respected and considered, setting new guidelines and norms in mass housing projects. After the Second World War, SMDS was favored by both communist and capitalist countries to accommodate the booming population efficiently. In 1924, Mies van der Rohe wrote: “if we would achieve this industrialization then social, economic, and artistic problems would be easily solved.” Here, the standardized, simple, and pure geometry symbolized the hope to abominate inequality both socially and aesthetically, freeing architecture from

conventional prejudices and showing the humbleness of minimizing the demonstration of wealth and social status.

However, it is accused of being “inhuman” by both political poles: Stalinist USSR accused the Post-Bauhaus International Style of being “inhuman” and symbolizing US imperialism, while the other side argued that the monotonous look of standardized panel housing in USSR was associated with the “inhuman” characteristics of Soviet socialism. Besides being utilized as a prop in the ideological Cold War, standardized panel housing is related to segregation and exclusion, like the Million Program (Swedish: Miljonprogrammet) in Stockholm, Sweden.

This thesis holds that SMDS is problematic because its lack of humanistic consideration (e.g., culture, history, and communication with its dwellers) makes the idea that the design incorporates a tabula rasa for politicians to write rhetorical propagandas on. To some extent, an SMDS project IS an idea of the policy makers, ventriloquized by architects with the building itself being the very result. However, the standardized monotonous buildings fail not only to pass on the manifold history and culture of the site, but also to present its residents properly. The latter is due to three factors: 1. The history and culture of the site is also a part of the residents’ identity, 2. The architects are not supported with enough time and budget to consider the residents’ need, 3. The very definition of SMDS determines its bona fide minimalism and uniformity, where no personal expression is allowed. Buildings in Million Program that accommodated immigrants from Arabic countries is an example of the aforementioned failures. And the lack of expression of the resident’s cultural

identity makes the buildings a mysterious and rejecting unknown land that causes fear, segregation, and antagonism, described as no-go-zones by some media.

Therefore, this thesis aims to create a democratic design process of standardized social housing projects, where individual choices in the design process are advocated. Compared to the traditional housing, SMDS deprives residents of their rights for self-expression, making them slaves of the architect’s design (which is, ironically, actually decided by policy makers), and corroborates a further loss of culture, history, and identity. Post-Standardization enables residents to participate in the design process by providing the dwellers with a modular façade system where the functionality and the aesthetics of their exteriors are determined by them, not only by the architect or the suppliers of the standardized panels.

Top: Sune Sundahl Installation of large concrete panels in residential buildings, 1967–1968 ArkDes photo collection Bottom: Prefabricated modules on site, Baiziwan Social Housing, Beijing, 2019, MAD Architects