Barrage of Houses: World War I and Mass-Produced Housing for France

A fascinating investigation of the World War I origins of mass-produced architecture

Mass-produced housing became increasingly prevalent through the second half of the twentieth century and is now found around the globe. Though its popularity and growing adoption have been primarily connected to the post-World War II housing boom, Etien Santiago weaves together architectural, construction, and sociopolitical history to reveal how its foundations were laid earlier, during World War I.

Prior to World War I, buildings that were made serially--quickly, cheaply, and in large numbers--were typically limited to utilitarian colonial or military applications. Such buildings were moreover assumed to be temporary. Yet the Great War shattered these assumptions, pushing architects, designers, and engineers to appropriate military advances in construction to create a new form of permanent residential architecture. A Barrage of Houses charts the rise of mass-produced dwellings in France from 1914 to the mid-1920s, as demonstrated through housing designs by Auguste and Gustave Perret, Henri Sauvage, and Le Corbusier. Through their use of concrete, metal, modular wooden parts, and new materials, these housing schemes addressed the tangible fallout of the war as well as its thorny conceptual challenges.