A ferrocement patent for emergency housing: the technological hut

Abstract

This article focuses on the comparison between the Spanish architects de La Hoz (Madrid,1924) and José María García de Paredes (Seville, 1924) projects for ‘ultra-cheap’ housing in Cordoba,how it evolved from a British patent named Ctesiphon, and the study of some of existing building serected following this construction system. The aim of this article is to stablish the evolution of the system from the original patent into a new possibility for low-income social housing. This system was used to erect new developments in the 1950s that would relocate people living in huts during thedictatorship era in Spain, thus new “technological huts” were proposed and erected. The research process includes an analysis of the documents and literature available of the patent and the projects themselves, and in situ tests (infrared thermography and samples extraction) will allow to establish the relation between its original inventor, the dissemination of his works in publications from thatera, and the Spanish company that subsequently, as a concession of the original patent, introduced that system in Spanish architecture. Analysis of the original patent document allows to study the primitive system as it was invented and for what uses it was conceived. Thus, such a methodology supports an establishment of the technical innovations achieved in order to adapt the system to the Andalusian environment at that time and its use for housing