Modular Architecture Unboxed

Above: Silo House, Cornell University. (Click on image to enlarge and view slide show.)
One of the occasional criticisms of prefabricated modular architecture that we sometimes run into is that it tends towards the boxy. We're somewhat puzzled by this assessment, since the same can be said of the vast majority of buildings erected since the Greeks began to construct their temples on rectangular plans 2,500 years ago. To be sure, our Platonic ancestors also designed the occasional circular edifice for purposes of pagan worship, but these are invariably regarded as punctuation points in a landscape of otherwise emphatic rectilinearity. Nor have any subsequent efforts to 'break the box,' be it by geodesic domes, fractured planes or undulating concrete, succeeded in dislodging the rectangular volume from its preferred status among the world's structures.

Top row: Left, Silo House interior. Middle and right: Homes for Haiti by Joseph Bellomo. Bottom row: Roll It House by University of Karlsruhe.
For aficionados of modular building, this is actually a good thing, because the very process of erecting a prefab structure lends itself to the use of rectangular units. For starters, just about every modular building component has to be transported to its site on the back of a flatbed truck, which of course means it must rest on a rectangular surface without anything extending into adjacent lanes or striking roadside objects while moving. It's also a relatively simple form to construct and to attach to other components to form larger compositions. And, as with site-built architecture, it's a whole lot easier to furnish the interiors than spaces that look to do away with flat walls, geometrically grounded plans or angles of 90 degrees.

Top row and bottom row left and middle: Eco-pods for downtown Boston by Howeler + Yoon Architecture and Squared Design Lab. Middle row right: InflateIt House by Dimitris Gourdoukis and Katerina Tryfonidou. Bottom row: Walking House by studio n55.
But does that keep anyone from designing modular buildings that aren't rectangular? Of course not – this is, after all, the age of hubris when it comes to defying expectations and perceived limits. We celebrate that spirit with a small collection of modular designs that eschew the rectilinear in favor of, well, in favor of just about anything else. We might not have been able to break the box in over two millennia of conventional building, but at least we don't stop trying.