The current North American vogue for prefabricated housing has largely been a matter of cool aesthetics. What's admired by the style-conscious, affluent consumers of such residential architecture include hard industrial surfaces, machined planes and edges, a general sense of tense economy -- a kind of modernism that looks mass-produced (even though it usually isn't), and that can certainly be beautiful in its own tough, sleek way.
Meanwhile, the design of the other kind of prefab housing -- rough-and-ready emergency shelter, durable low-end homes for the urban poor, and so forth -- has long been a minority activity, pursued by a handful of conscientious architects, often merely for the virtue of doing so.
The disaster that has overwhelmed New Orleans and the U.S. Gulf Coast will probably not cause the weight of contemporary interest in prefab to shift suddenly from chic to practical. But the calamity has already touched off a post-storm surge of creative thinking by U.S. architects, engineers and others about how best to deal with the immense housing emergency created by Hurricane Katrina.
Understandably, the buzz includes talk about prefab solutions. I suspect the sun won't go down on this vivid discussion without a sharp spike in the good work of applying industrial production and transportation methods to the worldwide problems of homelessness, displacement, diaspora.
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One outstanding example of this humane architectural work I've come across since the hurricane is Habitat for Humanity's "Operation home delivery," which will be launched in the next couple of weeks.
According to Duane Bates, spokesman at the international Christian organization's headquarters in Americus, Ga., staff architects, engineers and volunteer builders headquartered in Jackson, Miss., will preassemble house frames. These frames will then be bundled with necessary construction materials, and the ready-to-build kits will be shipped in containers to the local Habitat chapters already at work in badly damaged areas. Habitat has raised $10-million (all figures U.S.) so far for "Operation Home Delivery," Mr. Bates said -- enough money to construct about 140 permanent houses -- but "Habitat will build as many houses as it can fund."
As the Jackson operation gets ready to swing into action, the ground is being prepared for the actual construction. "We are working on assessment," Anne Bourne, executive director of a Habitat for Humanity group in the hard-hit Louisiana parish of St. Tammany, told me. "We are seeing families who have applied for Habitat for Humanity houses. We are going through Red Cross shelters to interview the homeless, and we are accepting new applications."
Successful applicants -- low-income working families with an annual wage between $12,000 and $25,000 -- will be expected to work with Habitat volunteers on the construction of their 1,200-square-foot kit homes, on land purchased by Habitat.
When the work is done, both house and land will be sold to the new homeowner for about $62,000, which is basically the cost of materials. Habitat for Humanity provides the mortgage.
"We work on biblical principles," Ms. Bourne said. "We charge no interest, we require no down payment. and there is no profit." Proceeds from mortgage payments go into a fund for underwriting still more owner-built houses, in sites throughout the United States and the world.
Since its foundation in 1981, Ms. Bourne's local Habitat organization has completed 74 homes in the western part of St. Tammany Parish, on the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain. Ten more are under construction, and 35 new home buyers had been approved for Habitat assistance before Katrina came ashore.
At this early point in the massive reconstruction effort, Ms. Bourne would not guess the number of new people who'll be coming forward for the kind of help Habitat provides. But I think it's a safe bet that Habitat's frame-builders in Jackson and the on-site workers will be in the business of making new homes for the storm victims of St. Tammany Parish, and parishes and counties throughout the afflicted region, for a long time to come.
Several things make "Operation Home Delivery" attractive. It is fast and efficient, and it transforms charitable dollars effectively into simple, durable housing for customers who need it urgently. It shows how established prefab procedures and transport systems can be used to address a humanitarian crisis swiftly. It begins with practical compassion (in the form of donations), continues with the co-operation of neighbours and prospective homeowners in the building phase, and ends in home ownership. Result: house-proud citizens instead of more welfare-state dependents.
But in addition to these and other positive things that can be said about it, the program demonstrates what can be done by architects and engineers of conscience who turn their skills and expertise to a great need in this sad, disordered world: providing shelter for the survivors of catastrophe.
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