Wolf house: a thrice-finished prefab midcentury home

Abstract

Renaissance humanist and architect Leon Battista Alberti (1406–1472) lists finishing as one of the three principles for achieving concinnitas, which denotes the skillful joining of parts. The mutual agreement and harmony between parts secure a “beautiful whole” to which nothing can be added, subtracted, or altered except for worse. When wholeness is equated with a complete and finished building, the principle can be interpreted in favor of thoroughly designed, one-of-a-kind works. However, finishing is less a matter of material production of a building than setting up geometric and formal relationships that are so crystallized that one can observe them even when a building is incomplete.

The concept gained unprecedented significance in modern times with the rise of systems thinking. Prefabricated building systems with standard-size elements and standardized joints, which limit how those elements are put together, lock certain geometric relationships in place before any construction activity commences. Building systems that prescribe certain formal relationships without designating the final form or building size makes finishing a potent tool. This essay traces the Renaissance concept of finishing onto a mid-twentieth century kit-of-parts house built around 1951 with adaptations of the commercially available General Panel system and modified twice by different architects decades apart following an “intelligent relationship” of parts.