The House as a Product

Mass fabrication of houses started with settlements in the colonies in the mid of the 19th century. Since then houses have been prefabricated with more or less success. With Henry Ford’s conveyor belt mass production, architect’s like Walter Gropius or Le Corbusier demanded the industrial fabrication of houses at the beginning of the 20th century. The Henry Ford Syndrome was born:  Why can’t we mass-produce houses – standard, well-designed, at low cost – in the same way Ford mass-produces cars?“ Since then many efforts have been taken to establish the product house. A big growth of the industry occurred in the 1960s, which was sharply stopped in the 1970s. Since then the prefab home industry developed to be a consistent part of the house building industry. Though it always experience a sharp competition by the site-built, traditional housebuilders.