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HISTORY OF CONSTRUCTION CULTURES
PROCEEDINGS OF THE SEVENTH INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS ON CONSTRUCTION HISTORY
(7ICCH), LISBON, PORTUGAL, 12–16 JULY 2021
History of Construction Cultures
Editors
João Mascarenhas-Mateus
Universidade de Lisboa, Portugal
Ana Paula Pires
Universidade dos Açores, Portugal
Co-editors
Manuel Marques Caiado & Ivo Veiga
Universidade de Lisboa, Portugal
VOLUME 1
Cover illustration: Julia Lyra, PTBUILDS19_20 research project, ref. PTDC/ARTDAQ/28984/2017.
Funded by the Portuguese Foundation for Science & Technology, PTBUILDS19_20 research project
ref. PTDC/ARTDAQ/ 28984/2017.All rights reserved. Published by Taylor & Francis Group plc.
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ISBN: 978-1-032-00199-9 (SET Hbk)
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ISBN Volume 1: 978-1-032-00202-6 (Hbk)
ISBN Volume 1: 978-1-032-00266-8 (Pbk)
ISBN Volume 1: 978-1-003-17335-9 (eBook)
DOI: 10.1201/9781003173359
ISBN Volume 2: 978-1-032-00203-3 (Hbk)
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DOI: 10.1201/9781003173434
History of Construction Cultures – Mascarenhas-Mateus & Paula Pires (eds)
© 2021 Copyright the Author(s), ISBN 978-1-032-00202-6
Table of contents
Introduction: History of Construction Cultures xi
Committees xiii
Organizing and supporting institutions xv
VOLUME 1
Open session: Cultural translation of construction cultures
On the construction of Byzantine vaulted systems through the eyes of the 19th century
French rationalists 3
A. Manzo
Style and stone – Stonemasonry in Switzerland between the Gothic and Renaissance 11
K. John
Stability and construction of the 16th century Mexican rubble masonry vaults in Jiutepec Morelos 19
F. B. Orozco Barrera
The construction of the vaults in the cathedrals of the Viceroyalty of Peru 26
C. Mazzanti
Conception, materiality and development of coffered vaults in the churches of Goa 33
M. Aranda Alonso
The domes in piperno stone of San Giacomo degli Spagnoli in Naples 41
M.T. Como
Local interpretations of classical models: The architecture of San Antonio mission churches,Texas 49
A. Lombardi & I. Benincampi
The transfer of thin wood vaulting from France to America 57
B. Hays
Tradition and invention in domestic construction in the Caribbean region: The case of
Southern Puerto Rico 63
J. Ortiz Colom
Translating the “Chinese roof”: Construction culture hybridization in West China Union University 71
H. Li
Creating an American Methodist college in China:A building history of Soochow University,
1900–1937 77
Y. Pan & X. Chen
“Imposing and provocative”: The design, style, construction and significance of Saint Anthony’s
Cathedral, Xinjiang (Shanxi, China), 1936–40 85
T. Coomans, Y. Xu & J. Zhang
1950s housing in Milan: Façade design and building culture 93
R. Lucente & L. Greco
Technological development in the construction of Kasumigaseki Building: Japan’s first super high-rise 100
T. Gondo
v
The skyscrapers of Milan: From experiments to recent constructive challenges 108
S. Talenti & A. Teodosio
Thematic session: Form with no formwork (vault construction with reduced formwork)
Brick vaulting without centering in the Mediterranean from Antiquity to the Middle Ages 119
P. Vitti
Geographic and chronological extent of brick vaults by slices 126
E. Rabasa-Díaz, A. González-Uriel, I.-J. Gil-Crespo, & A. Sanjurjo Álvarez
On the origin of certain vaults without formwork: Iranian timbrel vaults 134
A. Almagro
Types and uses of vaults and timbrel vaults in Interior Alentejo: Data for a typological study 141
A.C. Rosado
Forging the link among shape, formwork, and mortar assemblies in Guastavino vaulting 149
E. Murphy,T. Michiels & D. Trelstad
Thematic session: Understanding the culture of building expertise in situations
of uncertainty (Middle Age-Modern times)
A building expert without building training: The city of Lisbon vedor of works (14th-19th centuries) 157
S.M.G. Pinto
Maintaining/repairing Paris through expertise (1690–1790) 166
M. Barbot, R. Carvais, E. Château-Dutier & V. Nègre
To repair, renovate, or replace: A maintenance history of Virginia’s state buildings 176
L. Cook
Conflicts in the Brussels construction sector (1957–59): Judicial expertise of architects,
engineers and contractors 183
J. Dobbels
Thematic session: Historical timber constructions between regional
tradition and supra-regional influences
Timber floors made with elements shorter than the span covered in treatises and technical literature 193
E. Zamperini
Historic bell frames – regional traditions and transregional influence 201
I. Engelmann
Large span timber roofs in Italy between the 16th and 19th centuries 209
L. Guardigli & G. Mochi
Design-Fabricate-Assemble-Marvel – 18th and early 19th century bridge models in the
construction process 217
P.S.C. Caston
Late 18th-century innovation: The first Mediterranean purlin roof truss in German-speaking
Switzerland at Embrach ZH 225
J. Schäfer
Philibert De l’Orme roof constructions in Leiden and The Netherlands, innovation versus
tradition between 1800 and 1900 232
E.D. Orsel
Timber roof structures of 19th-century military riding halls in Switzerland 238
K.M. Russnaik
Thematic session: Historicizing material properties: Between technological and
cultural history
Comparative analysis of bricks manufactured in the NewWorld (1494–1544) 249
E. Prieto-Vicioso &V. Flores-Sasso
vi
The specification as an instrument for colonizing Oceti Sakowin lands 256
J. Garcia Fritz
Earthly beings and the Arts and Crafts discourse in the Cape: Conflicted and contradictory
(non)appropriations of vernacular traditions 262
N.R. Coetzer
Architecture, urbanism, construction work and local labor at the turn of the 20th century in
Lourenço Marques, Mozambique 268
L. Franco de Mendonça
Transparent acrylic constructions before and after 1950 – from the 1935 Opel Olympia to the
1972 Olympic roof 275
S. Brunner
Thematic session: South-South cooperation and non-alignment in the
construction world, 1950–1980s
Mostogradnja and Yugoslavia in Iraq: A bridge on the Euphrates near Fallujah (1964–1967) 285
L. Skansi & J. Jovanovi´c
Non-alignment and patterns of freedom and dominance 291
M.M. El-Ashmouni
Indian immigration and building construction in the UAE: Beginnings of a pilot study 297
S. K. Panicker
An Indian engineer in the Middle East: South-South cooperation and professional collaboration
in the 1970s 303
V. Mehta & R.R. Mehndiratta
Prefabricating non-alignment: The IMS Žeželj system across the decolonized world 311
J. Jovanovi´c
Thematic session: Construction cultures of the recent past. Building materials and
building techniques 1950–2000
The construction of efficiency: Glazing insulation in France and Belgium since 1945 321
J. Souviron
Stopray window panes: Use and restoration in various Brussels buildings 329
A. Inglisa
Prefabrication and participation by users: A challenge in Italy (1960–1976) 337
F. Albani
Welcome to the free world! Building materials in post-Soviet Estonia in the 1990s 345
M. Mändel
Demolishing the city, constructing the shoreline 350
A. Creba & J. Hutton
Thematic session: Hypar concrete shells. A structural, geometric and constructive revolution
in the mid-20th century
Juan Antonio Tonda, hyperbolic paraboloid builder 361
E. Alarcón, J.I. del Cueto & J. Antuña
Félix Candela and the auditorium shell of the Maracaibo Country Club, Venezuela: A dual
structural story 368
A. Petzold Rodríguez, E. González Meza, S. Novoa Peña & F. Mustieles Granell
The design and construction of Marcel Breuer’s Hunter College Library hypars: Their origin
and influences 374
M. A. Calvo-Salve
Replicating Candela’s Los Manantiales 382
M. Luzuriaga
vii
The collapse of the Tucker’s gym: Research impulses in the USA at the end of hypar shells era 392
M. Russo
Thematic session: Can Engineering culture be improved by Construction History?
The potential roles of construction history in engineering education 403
D.W. O’Dwyer
RBL through analysis of the development of high-rise buildings in Mexico City (1900–1952) 410
L. Santa Ana & P. Santa Ana
The role of construction history in safety assessments: A case study of reinforced concrete
“Gerber” bridges in Italy 416
S. Mornati & I. Giannetti
Problems of sources and bridges 424
T. Iori
Open session: The discipline of Construction History
Viollet-le-Duc and the élasticité of Gothic structures 433
S. Huerta
Finding value in the ordinary to better understand the extraordinary. Systematic surveys in
baroque roofs and medieval log-buildings 440
M. Gantner
The post-war construction site in photographs: The photographic collection of the
Belgian contractor firm Van Laere (1938) 447
J.Angillis, L. Schrijver & I. Bertels
Open session: Building actors
Building the ephemeral in Turin, capital of the Savoyard States 457
V. Burgassi & M. Volpiano
The business of the early consulting engineer: The case ofThomas Telford (1815–1834) 463
M.M. Chrimes
Modernization of civil construction in Brazil in the second half of the 19th century:
Strategies of a local entrepreneur 471
R. Pereira, A.B. Menegaldo & J. Fernandes
Brussels iron and steel builders in the 19th and 20th centuries: A macroeconomic and
spatial exploration 479
F. Vandyck, M. Degraeve & S.Van de Voorde
Salvaging construction materials in Brussels, 1900–1925 487
I. Wouters & J. Dobbels
Building the Beaux-Arts in the Steel City: Pittsburgh’s Rodef Shalom Synagogue, 1906–1907 494
C.D. Armstrong
Industrialising timber craftsmanship: Early glulam within the traditional timber construction
in Switzerland 502
M. Rinke & R. Haddadi
Luigi Santarella: Reinforced concrete design culture through the technical literature 509
A. Bologna & C. Gavello
Entanglements within an emerging technology: Swiss Federal railways and early glulam 517
R. Haddadi & M. Rinke
Technique and architecture in the work of Manuel Sanchez Arcas, 1920–1936 524
A. Rodríguez García & R.H. de la Cuerda
TRABEKA – General contractor in Africa and Belgium (1924–39) 530
B. Espion & M. Provost
viii
The Ghent Booktower (1933–1947):A product of collaborating professionals within
institutional know-how 538
L. Bulckaen & R. Devos
Building the Estado Novo: Construction companies and public works in Portugal (1933–1974) 546
J. Mascarenhas-Mateus, I. Veiga & M. Marques Caiado
The introduction of prestressed concrete in Portugal: Teixeira Rêgo 554
C. Pimenta do Vale, M.L. Sampaio & R.F. Póvoas
Claudio Marcello and his dam 562
T. Iori & F. Argenio
Visionary engineering between utopia and futurism: Italian structures beyond borders
after World War Two 570
G. Capurso & F. Martire
Between academy and practice:Adriano Galli and the prestressed water bridge over the Casilina in
Mignano Montelungo (1954) 578
L. Grieco & M.G. d’Amelio
Italian tall buildings by Società Generale Immobiliare (SGI) in the 1950s–1960s:
Some Milanese case studies 586
F. Spada
Construction culture between tradition and modernity: Three works by Álvaro Siza 594
T. C. Ferreira, F. Barbosa & E. Fernandes
Industrialization by CasMez and steel built factories in Southern Italy 602
A. Tosone & D. di Donato
The ‘exact fantasy’ of steel:The impossible mission of Costruzioni Metalliche Finsider (CMF) 610
C. Nuzzolese
A concrete story: The 15-year collaboration between Harry Seidler and Pier Luigi Nervi, 1963–1978 618
P. Stracchi
The experiments on measurement models for the Munich Olympic site 625
B. Schmid & C. Weber
The “3-dimensional wall” of the Centre Pompidou in Paris: Invention and evolution of a
polyvalent device 632
B. Hamzeian
Open session: Building materials: Their history, extraction, transformation
and manipulation
Wood as a building material in Toru ´n: A contribution to research on medieval carpentry art of
Northern Poland 643
U. Schaaf & M. Prarat
The glaziers’ invoices from the Plantin-Moretus archives, 1600–1800 650
L. Langouche
The House of Mercy of Lourinhã: Contributions to the history of construction in the early 17th century 657
J. B. Pinho
Spatial and structural features of St Petersburg architecture in the 18th century:
Transition from wood to brick 664
S.V. Sementsov
Transition from wood to iron in French theatre structures: A new construction system 669
A.M. Chalvatzi
Designing a ground-breaking structure: Notes on the cast-iron/wrought-iron dome of the
former Halle au Blé, 1809–1813 677
M. Porrino
ix
The development and use of non-staining cements in American masonry 685
H. Hartshorn
Impact of European knowledge on the development of reinforced concrete in the Russian Empire 693
V. Korensky
Metal structural work embedded in concrete for slender vaults, 1880–1910 698
B. Lampariello
On horizontality in architecture: Robert Maillart, the Queen Alexandra Sanatorium and the
evolution of the slab 706
D. Korwan
Hidden in the mix: How a regionally specific aggregate affected St. Louis Missouri’s built environment 712
L. Hancock
The Northern Lock, The Netherlands: At the frontier of 1920s concrete technology 720
T.G. Nijland & H.A. Heinemann
A reinforced concrete stage tower within a 18th-century masonry theater: The Municipal
Theater of Bologna 726
D. Prati, G. Predari,A. Massafra & B. Salmi
Wooden Structures by G. G. Karlsen and the Derevyagin beam 734
P.W.R. Bell
Open session: Building machines, tools and equipment
The tools of the Roman stone craftsman: The marks left on marble decorative elements in Valeria 743
J. Atienza Fuente
An innovative flooring technique in Roman times (Villa of Diomedes, Pompeii) 750
H. Dessales & F. Monier
How to build a (brick) barrel vault 757
S.M. Holzer
Quicker, cheaper, higher: A “new” French scaffolding system in the first half of the 20th century 765
J. Pernin
The emergence of electric arc welding in the construction and reinforcement of railway bridges in
France, 1930s–1940s 772
S. Sire, B. Espion & M. Ragueneau
Development and rationalization of formwork for curved concrete shells in the Japanese construction
industry in the 1950s 779
S. Hayasahi, T. Gondo & H. Chiba
Danish spheres and Australian falsework: Casting the Sydney Opera House 786
L. Cardellicchio, P. Stracchi & P. Tombesi
Author index 795
x
History of Construction Cultures – Mascarenhas-Mateus & Paula Pires (eds)
© 2021 Copyright the Author(s), ISBN 978-1-032-00202-6
Introduction: History of Construction Cultures
We are what we build and how we build; thus, the study of Construction History is now more than ever at the
centre of current debates as to the shape of a sustainable future for humankind. Embracing that statement, the
present work takes the title History of Construction Cultures and aims to celebrate and expand our understanding
of the ways in which everyday building activities have been perceived and experienced in different cultures, times
and places.
This two-volume publication brings together the communications that were presented at the 7ICCH – Seventh
International Congress on Construction History, broadcast live from Lisbon, Portugal on 12–16 July 2021. The
7ICCH was organized by the Sociedade Por tuguesa de Estudos de História da Construção (Portuguese Society for
Construction History Studies – SPEHC); the Lisbon School of Architecture, University of Lisbon; its Research
Centre (CIAUD); and the College of Social and Human Sciences of the NOVA University of Lisbon (NOVA
FCSH).
This is the first time the International Congresses on Construction History (ICCH) Proceedings will be
available in open access format in addition to the traditional printed and digital formats, embracing open science
principles and increasing the societal impact of research. The work embodies and reflects the research done in
different contexts worldwide in the sphere of Construction History with a view to advancing on the path opened
by earlier ICCH editions. The first edition of ICCH took place in Madrid in 2003. Since then, it has been a
regular event organized at three-year intervals: Cambridge (2006), Cottbus (2009), Paris (2012), Chicago (2015)
and Brussels (2018).
7ICCH focused on the many problems involved in the millennia-old human activity of building practiced in
the most diverse cultures of the world, stimulating the cross-over with other disciplines. The response to this
broad invitation materialized in 357 paper proposals.A thorough evaluation and selection process involving the
International Scientific Committee resulted in the 206 papers of this work, authored by researchers from 37
countries: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, China, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Egypt,
Estonia, France, Germany, India, Iran, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Peru,
Poland, Portugal, Puerto Rico, Russia, Serbia, Spain, South Africa, Sweden, Switzerland,Thailand, UnitedArab
Emirates, United Kingdom, United States of America, and Venezuela.
The study of construction cultures entails the analysis of the transformation of a community’s knowledge
capital expressed in the activity of construction. As such, Construction History is a broad field of knowledge that
encompasses all of the actors involved in that activity, whether collective (contractors, materials producers and
suppliers, schools, associations, and institutions) or individual (engineers, architects, entrepreneurs, craftsmen).
In each given location and historical period, these actors have engaged in building using particular technolo-
gies, tools, machines and materials. They have followed specific rules and laws, and transferred knowledge on
construction in specific ways. Their activity has had an economic value and belonged to a particular political
context, and it has been organized following a set of social and cultural models.
This broad range of issues was debated during the Congress in general open sessions, as well as in special
thematic sessions. Open sessions covered a wide variety of aspects related to Construction History. Thematic
sessions were selected by the Scientific Committee after a call for proposals: they highlight themes of recent
debate, approaches and directions, fostering transnational and interdisciplinary collaboration on promising and
propitious subjects. The open sessions topics were:
– Cultural translation of construction cultures: Colonial building processes and autochthonous cultures;
hybridization of construction cultures, local interpretation of imported cultures of building; adaptation of
building processes to different material conditions;
– The discipline of Construction History: Epistemological issues, methodology; teaching; historiography;
sources on Construction History;
– Building actors: Contractors, architects, engineers; master builders, craftspeople, trade unions and guilds;
institutions and organizations;
– Building materials: Their history, extraction, transformation and manipulation (timber; earth, brick and tiles;
iron and steel; binders; concrete and reinforced concrete; plaster and mortar; glass and glazing; composite
materials);
xi
– Building machines, tools and equipment: Simple machines, steam operated-machines, hand tools, pneumatic
tools, scaffolding;
– Construction processes: Design, execution and protective operations related to durability and maintenance;
organization of the construction site; prefabrication and industrialization; craftsmanship and workshops;
foundations, superstructures, roofs, coatings, paint;
– Building services and techniques: Lighting; heating; ventilation; health and comfort;
– Structural theory and analysis: Stereotomy; modelling and simulation; structural theory and structural forms;
applied sciences; relation between theory and practice;
– Political, social and economic aspects: Economics of construction; law and juridical aspects; politics and
policies; hierarchy of actors; public works and territory management, marketing and propaganda;
– Knowledge transfer: Technical literature, rules and standards; building regulations; training and education;
drawings; patents; scientific dissemination, innovations, experiments and events.
The thematic sessions selected were:
– Form with no formwork (vault construction with reduced formwork);
– Understanding the culture of building expertise in situations of uncertainty (Middle Ages-Modern times);
– Historical timber constructions between regional tradition and supra-regional influences;
– Historicizing material properties: Between technological and cultural history;
– South-South cooperation and non-alignment in the construction world 1950s–1980s;
– Construction cultures of the recent past: Building materials and building techniques 1950–2000;
– Hypar concrete shells: A structural, geometric and constructive revolution in the mid-20th century;
– Can engineering culture be improved by construction history?
Volume 1 begins with the open session “Cultural translation of construction cultures” and continues with all of
the thematic sessions, each one preceded by an introductory text by the session chairs. The volume ends with
the first part of the papers presented at the open sessions, organized chronologically. Volume 2 is dedicated to
the remaining topics within the general themes, also in chronological order.
Four keynote speakers were chosen to present their most recent research results on different historical periods:
Marco Fabbri on “Building in Ancient Rome: The fortifications of Pompeii”; Stefan Holzer “The role of tem-
porary works on the medieval and early modern construction site”; Vitale Zanchettin “Raphael’s architecture:
Buildings and materials” and Beatriz Mugayar Kühl “Railways in São Paulo (Brazil): Impacts on the construction
culture and on the transformation of the territory”.
The editors and the organizers wish to express their immense gratitude to all members of the International
Scientific Committee, who, despite the difficult context of the pandemic, worked intensively every time they
were called on to give their rigorous evaluation of the different papers.
The 7ICCH was the first congress convened under the aegis of the International Federation of Construction
History,founded in July 2018 in Brussels. Therefore, we are also very grateful to all the members of the Federation,
composed of the presidents of the British, Spanish, Francophone, German, U.S. and Portuguese Societies and
its Belgian co-opted member.A special thanks is due for all the expertise and experience that was passed on by
our colleagues who have been organizing this unique and world significant event since 2003, and in particular
to our predecessors from all the Belgian universities who organized 6ICCH.
The editors wish to extend their sincerest thanks to authors and co-authors for their support, patience, and
efforts. This two-volume work would not exist but for the time, knowledge, and generosity they invested in the
initiative.
Our sincere thanks also go out to Kate Major Patience, Terry Lee Little, Kevin Rose and Anne Samson for
proofreading every paper included here, and to the team at Taylor & Francis (Netherlands), in particular Germaine
Seijger and Leon Bijnsdorp.
Finally, we are grateful to all members of the Local Committee and to the institutions that have supported
both the 7ICCH event and the publication of these proceedings.
The Editors
João Mascarenhas-Mateus andAna Paula Pires
xii
History of Construction Cultures – Mascarenhas-Mateus & Paula Pires (eds)
© 2021 Copyright the Author(s), ISBN 978-1-032-00202-6
Committees
ORGANIZING COMMITTEE
Chair: João Mascarenhas Mateus (Universidade de Lisboa)
Treasurer: Ana Paula Pires Universidade dos Açores
Ivo Veiga (Universidade de Lisboa)
José Aguiar (Universidade de Lisboa)
Manuel Caiado (Universidade de Lisboa)
Maria Fernanda Rollo (Universidade NOVA de Lisboa)
Milton Pacheco (Universidade NOVA de Lisboa & Universidade de Coimbra)
Rita Fernandes (Universidade de Lisboa)
Sandra M.G. Pinto (Universidade NOVA de Lisboa)
SCIENTIFIC COMMITTEE
Bill Addis (independent scholar, United Kingdom)
Salvatore Apprea (École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland)
Antonio Becchi (Max Planck Institute for the History of Science Berlin, Germany)
Vladimir Benincasa (Universidade Estadual Paulista, Brasil)
Inge Bertels (Universiteit Antwerpen, Belgium)
João Vieira Caldas (Universidade de Lisboa, Portugal)
James Campbell (University of Cambridge, United Kingdom)
Robert Carvais (CNRS – Université Paris Nanterre, France)
Yunlian Chen (Okayama University, Japan)
Thierry Ciblac (École nationale supérieure d’architecture de Paris-Malaquais, France)
Juan Ignacio del Cueto Ruiz-Funes (Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, México)
Maria Grazia d’Amelio (Università degli Studi di Roma “Tor Vergata”, Italy)
Hélène Dessales (École normale supérieure Paris, France)
Bernard Espion (Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium)
Virginia Flores Sasso (Pontificia Universidad Católica Madre y Maestra, Dominican Republic)
Donald Friedman (Old Structures Engineering, NewYork, USA)
Paula Fuentes González (Brandenburgische Technische Universität Cottbus-Senftenberg,
Germany & Universidad Politécnica Madrid, Spain)
António Sousa Gago (Universidade de Lisboa, Portugal)
Ignacio Javier Gil Crespo (Centro de Estudios José Joaquín de Mora, Spain)
Javier Giron (Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Spain)
Franz Graf (École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland)
Stefan Holzer (Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich, Switzerland)
Santiago Huerta (Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Spain)
Tullia Iori (Università degli Studi di Roma “Tor Vergata”, Italy)
Aleksandra Kosykh (Brandenburgische Technische Universität Cottbus-Senftenberg, Germany)
Beatriz Mugayar Kühl (Universidade de São Paulo, Brazil)
Karl-Eugen Kurrer (Hochschule Coburg, Germany)
Guy Lambert (École nationale supérieure d’architecture de Paris-Belleville, France)
Thomas Leslie (Iowa State University, United States of America)
Fabián Santiago Lopez-Ulloa (Universidad Técnica deAmbato, Ecuador)
Werner Lorenz (Brandenburgische Technische Universität Cottbus-Senftenberg, Germany)
Rafael Marin-Sánchez (Universidad Politécnica deValencia, Spain)
João Mascarenhas-Mateus (Universidade de Lisboa, Portugal)
Arnaldo Sousa Melo (Universidade do Minho, Portugal)
Valérie Nègre (Université Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne, France)
Marco Rosario Nobile (Università degli Studi di Palermo, Italy)
xiii
John Ochsendorf (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, United States ofAmerica)
Yiting Pan (Soochow University, China)
Tom Peters (Lehigh University, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, United States of America)
Sandra M.G. Pinto (Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Portugal)
Ana Paula Pires (Universidade Nova de Lisboa & Universidade dosAçores, Portugal)
Rui Póvoas (Universidade do Porto, Portugal)
W.J.(Wido) Quist (Technische Universiteit Delft, The Netherlands)
Enrique Rabasa-Díaz (Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Spain)
Mario Rinke (Universiteit Antwerpen, Belgium)
Maria Fernanda Rollo (Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Portugal)
Hermann Schlimme (Technische Universität Berlin, Germany)
Sergey Sementsov (Saint Petersburg State University of Architecture and Civil Engineering, Russia)
Amit Srivastava (University ofAdelaide, Australia)
Robert Thorne (University of Liverpool, United Kingdom)
Jos Tomlow (Hochschule Zittau/Görlitz, Germany)
Dirk Van de Vijver (Universiteit Utrecht, The Netherlands)
Stephanie Van de Voorde (Vrije Universiteit Brussels, Belgium)
Christine Wall (University of Westminster, United Kingdom)
David Wendland (Brandenburgische Technische Universität Cottbus-Senftenberg, Germany)
Ine Wouters (Vrije Universiteit Brussels, Belgium)
LOCAL COMMITTEE
Júlio Appleton (Universidade de Lisboa)
João Vieira Caldas (Universidade de Lisboa)
Hélder Carita (Universidade NOVA de Lisboa)
Teresa Cunha Ferreira (Universidade do Porto)
António Sousa Gago (Universidade de Lisboa)
Soraya Genin (Instituto Universitário de Lisboa)
Teresa Valsassina Heitor (Universidade de Lisboa)
Jorge Mascarenhas (Instituto Politécnico de Tomar)
Ana Cardoso de Matos (Universidade de Évora)
Madalena Cunha Matos (Universidade de Lisboa)
Arnaldo de Sousa Melo (Universidade do Minho)
Rui Póvoas (Universidade do Porto)
Maria do Carmo Ribeiro (Universidade do Minho)
Vítor Cóias e Silva (Geocorpa, Portugal)
José Monterroso Teixeira (Universidade Autónoma de Lisboa)
Ana Tostões (Universidade de Lisboa)
Clara Pimenta do Vale (Universidade do Porto)
Humberto Varum (Universidade do Porto)
Rosário Veiga (Laboratório Nacional de Engenharia Civil)
xiv
Supporting institutions
History of Construction Cultures – Mascarenhas-Mateus & Paula Pires (eds)
© 2021 Copyright the Author(s), ISBN 978-1-032-00202-6
Prefabricating non-alignment: The IMS Žeželj system
across the decolonized world
J. Jovanovi´c
Technische Universität Wien, Austria
ABSTRACT: The IMS Žeželj system was arguably one of the most successful prefabricated housing systems of
the post-war period. However, it remains mostly unknown within construction history, because of its “peripheral”
origins and distribution, which circumvented the imperial centers of the Cold War. Invented in socialistYugoslavia
in 1957, it was widely exported across Cold War divisions, especially to member states of the Non-Aligned
Movement.A technology with deep colonial roots, prefabrication was recast as a tool of anticolonial solidarity,
linking Europe’s semi-periphery, with its own history of imperial subjugation, and the recently decolonized
countries in Africa,Asia, and the Caribbean. Created by theYugoslav constructor Branko Žeželj, the IMS Žeželj
system was reminiscent of Le Corbusier’s Maison Domino: a skeleton consisting of prestressed pillars and slabs.
Prestressing technology, widely applied in the construction of large-span structures, was the system’s key feature,
one that had been rarely used in mass housing.
1 INTRODUCTION
Although the use of prefabricates can be traced back
to antiquity, the modern history of prefabrication is
often linked to the expansion of timber and iron
industries in Britain and the United States of Amer-
ica in the 19th century. As iron was largely reserved
for the architecture of urban areas, such as Thomas
Telford’s St Katharine Docks in London, 1828, or the
cast-iron buildings of James Bogardus in the USA,
timber became a material reserved for remote rural
areas, especially for the housing of settlers in the new
colonies during the gold rush in North America and
Australia. It is widely accepted that the first known
application of fully prefabricated construction was that
of the “Portable Colonial Cottages for Emigrants”,
better known as Manning Houses, after John Man-
ning, a London-based carpenter who designed them.
These were advertised and sold to Australian settlers
from 1830 onward and were the first fully prefabri-
cated houses made of wood, the aim of which was to
be assembled fast and transported far, to areas that
had no infrastructure, trained workforce, or industrial
production. As a “pioneering stance of colonialism
being given an up-to-date technical base, an exam-
ple of what has been aptly called ‘the technology of
colonial expansion”’ and “an early manifestation of
the industrialization of the building process and (…)
the reciprocal relationship of the mother country to
the colonies” (Herbert 1972, 272, 274) the Manning
Houses, and consequentially the technology of pre-
fabrication, are burdened with the legacy of colonial
expansion and its policies.
The technology of prefabrication in the socialist
countries of Europe developed from very different
origins. Except for interwar housing in Czechoslo-
vakia and the USSR, there were only a few modest
experiments with prefabrication in other Eastern Euro-
pean countries. Mass prefabrication emerged in these
countries only in the scope of post-World War Two
redevelopment and the new welfare policies of mass
housing. TheYugoslav IMS Žeželj prefabrication sys-
tem was no exception, emerging from the post-war
hardship and a conscious effort by theYugoslav lead-
ership to pursue independent development. Branko
Žeželj, one of Yugoslavia’s most renowned engineers,
designed the IMS Žeželj prefabricated system tak-
ing into consideration the material and labor limita-
tions in post-war Yugoslavia, relying on concrete as
the most affordable modern material, which did not
require a highly trained workforce on the construc-
tion site. The system incorporated the accompanying
assembly equipment, as well as simple training proce-
dures. The situation was similar elsewhere: the same
epithets – lagging, traditional, un(der)developed, non-
industrial/craft-dependent economy – were used to
describe the proverbial turning point wherever indus-
trialized housing production and prefabrication were
implemented, regardless of the socio-political sys-
tem: whether in France and Sweden, or in the Soviet
Union, Czechoslovakia, andYugoslavia. The technol-
ogy was immediately put into mass production to help
alleviate the housing crisis in Yugoslav cities, but it
was soon also exported for various purposes: as a
form of post-disaster relief, as technical assistance,
and for commercial purposes. The system was used
DOI 10.1201/9781003173359-41 311
in Hungary, Italy, Austria, Bulgaria, Russia, Georgia,
Ukraine, China, Cuba, Egypt, Ethiopia, Angola, and
the Philippines, with anecdotal evidence of possible
usage in Libya, Iran, and Argentina, which are yet to
be confirmed. The system came to be approved for
use in an even larger number of countries, being offi-
cially attested and verified in Yugoslavia, Hungary,
Italy, Austria, USSR/Russia, Uzbekistan, Cuba, PR
China, and the USA. This paper will focus on the
exports of the IMS Žeželj system to Ethiopia, Cuba
and Angola, countries to whichit was exported through
all the above-mentioned modalities. Here, prefabrica-
tion was manifested not only as a material practice,
but also as an avatar of theYugoslav political system,
promoting an alternative, self-managed development
path, and independence from imperial incursions. It
hadalwaysbeen theintention that exportsof the system
would be used in a variety of ways, from mass housing
to schools and administrative buildings. The scale of
application differed in each country: in Angola only
two experimental buildings were completed, while
Cuba imported three prefabrication plants and built
another five, implementing the system for mass hous-
ing across the country. This paper will discuss the
mechanisms that enabled these different scales of
application.
2 STEMMING FROM A CRISIS: THE ORIGINS
OF THE IMS ŽEŽELJ SYSTEM
In the mid-1950s, the government of the Federal
People’s Republic of Yugoslavia (FPRY) initiated an
ambitious program to develop the construction sector.
The country’s post-war reconstruction in the previ-
ous decade had been an unmitigated success, and
the economy became one of the fastest growing in
the world, but the construction industry still lagged
behind other areas of the economy. This lag occurred
because the construction sector and the accompanying
industries were designated a “service” to other eco-
nomic activities, particularly to heavy industry, which
was considered the backbone of modernization and
development efforts.
Construction relied on traditional technologies and
crafts, especially for projects that were not related to
new industrial or transportation facilities (Jovanovic,
manuscript). However, around 1955, as the econ-
omy switched to a fully self-managed organization,
a major new field of capital investment was initiated:
the infrastructures of the so-called social standard. It
included the construction of mass housing with com-
plementary services, the networks of educational and
healthcare facilities, and road and transport infrastruc-
ture. To achieve these goals the construction sector
had to consolidate, modernize, and industrialize. The
country’s leadership decided to take the path of typifi-
cation, standardization, and prefabrication, similar to
the processes undertaken by other European countries
on both sides of the Iron Curtain. This was a conscious
Figure 1. The concept of the IMS Žeželj system. Source:
Sistem IMS, 2.
decision, based on an assessment of the country’s
available educational and industrial resources, skills,
and international connections, as well as the previous
experiences of other industrial nations, which could
be used to predict costs and avoid mistakes (Figures 1
and 2).
Between 1955 and 1957, the state allocated funding
for a variety of competitions in the field of hous-
ing. In 1956 a call for typified multi-storey housing
was issued, followed in 1957 by a call for innova-
tion in the field of structural systems for housing.
In 1957, the Federal Assembly of the FPRY enacted
the Resolution on the Prospective Development of the
Building Sector to systemically support investments
and enhance scientific research. Owing to these invest-
ments, the IMS Žeželj prefabricated system emerged,
alongside dozens of prefabrication systems developed
by different companies and institutes across the coun-
try, which were later applied in housing construction,
but also adapted for other typologies, such as health-
care, administration, and education. The government’s
developmental strategy aimed at creating and applying
as many domestically produced products and tech-
nologies as possible.Yugoslavia extensively relied on
(and later also offered) technical assistance via the
United Nations in a manner that always involvedstrate-
gic planning by the ministerial bodies in charge, with
an eye on potential further advancement of the local
construction sector. The experience of international
isolation provoked by the Tito-Stalin split in 1948 and
the subsequent Cominform Resolution motivated the
government to look inward and to rely on its own
resources. This resilience materialized in homegrown
technologies such as IMS Žeželj, as a strategy of
minimizing the import of foreign construction meth-
ods and equipment. This was also motivated as a
way of avoiding a foreign trade deficit, and even
more importantly of reducing the potential dependence
on foreign patent rights. These were used whenever
Yugoslav construction companies appeared on for-
eign markets, especially in former colonies, and were
presented as an added value in facing the common
adversity.
312
Figure 2. Model of the Lixeira-Luanda experimental hous-
ing, developed as part of the technical assistance for Angola
in 1976. Source: personal archive of Dr Ivan Petrovic.
3 YUGOSLAV CONSTRUCTION ABROAD:
EXPORTING KNOWLEDGE AND
EXPERIENCE, TRADING AND
SOLIDARIZING
The Yugoslav construction sector already began to
export in 1952, although the country was still suf-
fering the consequences of the Cominform crisis.
At the height of international isolation from the
rest of Europe, export markets were found in Syria,
Turkey, Greece, Pakistan, Egypt, India, Lebanon, and
Paraguay. Neither the government nor the construc-
tion companies hid their motivations: the country
needed foreign currency to pay off foreign debts, while
the large self-managed construction sector needed
commissions to survive. During the post-war recon-
struction (1944–7) this sector’s capacities grew, as the
country prepared for the next phase of infrastructural
investments, but the crisis during the period between
1948 and 1953 left the nascent capacities underuti-
lized. The appearance of variousYugoslav companies
in foreign markets thus predated the founding of the
Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) by several years –
even if one considers the 1955 Bandung Conference
as its starting point, rather than its official founding
summit in Belgrade in 1961. From the start, these for-
eign markets transcended the Cold War divisions and
alliances, thus pointing to the direction that Yugoslav
diplomacy would follow in the decades to come. The
economy of the new socialist country was still weak,
and it could not compete with the developed coun-
tries, so it had to look elsewhere: the former territories
of the Ottoman Empire and the new countries of the
emerging decolonized world, which – in the opin-
ion of Yugoslav officials – were experiencing similar
challenges to Yugoslavia’s own. However, research
so far has shown that, besides providing the most
affordable offers, theYugoslav government made sure
that foreign projects went hand-in-hand with friendly
diplomatic relations: the construction was covered by
bilateral inter-state agreements, and, depending on the
country, financial and technical arrangements – favor-
able loans, credits, assistance, exchanges, etc. – were
made available. Construction was just one part of the
carefully planned and negotiated appearance of the
Yugoslav economy on the global markets: documents
on exports-imports of agricultural goods are often
found side by side with foreign contracts for banking
services or for the construction of bridges and ports
(AJ, F130, F225, F574).
The export of the IMS Žeželj system followed a
somewhat different logic: as a public institute, the
Institute for Materials’Testing of the People’s Republic
of Serbia (Institute IMS), where Žeželj was employed,
technically did not possess production lines. Instead,
it simply sold patent rights to construction enter-
prises (such as Napred, Rad, Komgrap, Trudbenik
and many other such enterprises across Yugoslavia)
to use their system, and it provided assistance in set-
ting up production lines. A similar pattern existed
with exports; these only had to be administratively
routed via the Chamber of Commerce and logisti-
cally via one of the licensed organizations represent-
ing Yugoslav companies abroad: Unioninženjering,
Montinvest, Invest-Import, etc (Figure 3).
By 1967, when the earliest exports of IMS Žeželj
technology discussed here occurred,Yugoslavia’s con-
struction sector was working at full capacity. The
investments made by the government in the 1950s
began to pay off, and around 40,000 IMS apartments
were either in the process of being built or in the
preparation phase across the country.The system was
advertised from the onset as a fast and rational solu-
tion for the housing crisis, applicable in unfavorable
313
Figure 3. Experimental construction site of IMS Žeželj
technology in Block 2 in New Belgrade, Serbia, ca. 1960.
Source: Institute IMS archive.
circumstances, for example in areas which lacked a
trained workforce or construction materials. The sys-
tem was developed and patented in 1957 by the civil
engineer Branko Žeželj, who was by then already well
known for his bridges and the prestressed dome of the
Hall 1 of the Belgrade Fair. Žeželj developed the sys-
tem based on his experiences and extensive knowledge
of the situation in the country: the (lack of) resources
such as cement and iron, modest industrial capacities,
the quality of construction materials and methods that
were largelydependent on craftsmanship, as well as the
(lack of) skills of the workforce, which mostly origi-
nated from the countryside. The system was developed
under the auspices of the Institute IMS and was
extensively elaborated and enhanced by the work and
research of Žeželj’s coworkers in several of the Insti-
tute’s departments. It was precisely this collaboration
that was the turning point for the system’s acclaim
among professionals, making it the most successful
and popular among architects inYugoslavia, primarily
due to the flexibility of design that it offered.The sys-
tem is skeletal, consisting of four pillars, each one to
three storeys high, and a square waffle slab spanning
3.00 to 7.20 meters (Figure 4).
Prestressing tenons are positioned inside the pil-
lars and on the side of the slab, post-tensioned by
a pressure of 40 MPa horizontally and 2 MPa verti-
cally (Figure 1). The system was at first envisioned
as closed prefabrication, but as the number of orders
grew and the production circumstances evolved, the
variety of architectural designs increased, and the sys-
tem was remodeled and reorganized to better facilitate
the creative process. IMS Žeželj became an open
system, which meant that structural elements (slabs,
cantilevers and pillars) could be ordered and assem-
bled completely independently of the envelope, which
in turn could be designed however the architects envis-
aged. However, if required, envelope elements, such
as spandrels and walls, could be ordered as well,
in addition to such components as staircases, bath-
rooms and staircase shafts, which the system’s creators
dubbed “haberdashery” (Figure 4). Finally, the system
was envisioned and promoted as socially responsible,
Figure 4. Elements of the IMS Žeželj system. Source:
System IMS, 4–5.
meaning that with very little training, even an unskilled
workforce could participate in the assembly process.
The elements could be transported by trucks for ranges
up to 100 km, or an unlimited range by railway and
ship, and the system could be utilized even if there were
no permanent plants in the vicinity of the construc-
tion site, through the establishment of “polygonal”
(on-site) prefabrication (Figure 3). The pre-casting
production line was made of durable elements, usu-
ally high-quality steel, allowing it to be used multiple
times. Prior to the first exports, all the described
features were successfully applied on the construc-
tion sites within Yugoslavia, most extensively in New
Belgrade (Figure 5).
4 CONSTRUCTION IN THE SHADOW OF
FOREIGN POLICIES
In 1966, the devastating Hurricane Alma hit the islands
and mainland of Cuba, causing millions of dollars’
worth of damage and 12 deaths. As a part of the
international relief effort, Yugoslavia donated an IMS
Žeželj system plant with a production capacity of
1500 dwellings per year to help alleviate the hous-
ing crisis, to be assembled in Santiago de Cuba. The
colorful 18-storey high housing towers built with the
IMS Žeželj technology dominate the cityscape to this
day. In addition to housing, other typologies were
314
Figure 5. Experimental building of the Cuban Ministry of
Construction, location unknown, ca. 1970. Source: Institute
IMS archive.
also built. Although diplomatic relations with Cuba
had been established from 1951, with the Yugoslav
embassy in Mexico also servicing Cuba, all ties were
severed in 1958 when the Batista regime refused
to issue the Agrément for the Yugoslav ambassador.
After the Cuban Revolution, in 1959, the govern-
ment ofYugoslavia immediately dispatched to Havana
the Federal Secretary of Foreign Affairs, the promi-
nent intellectual and revolutionary Konstantin Koca
Popovic. Popovic was a surrealist poet who was also
a Spanish Civil War and Second World War veteran
and revolutionary. His task was to discover who was
tasked with establishing diplomatic relations with the
new revolutionary government. At first, he was not
received warmly because of Yugoslavia’s split with
the Soviet Union. “The Cubans are very suspicious”,
Popovic reported back to Belgrade, “they consider
us to be revisionists.” Although they remained rela-
tively suspicious ofYugoslav self-managed socialism
and occasionally raised disputes within the NAM, the
Cubans nevertheless accepted the establishment of the
Yugoslav embassy and bilateral relations improved
over time (AJ, I-5-b/67). By the early 1970s Cuba
imported two additional fully equipped IMS Žeželj
factories, assembled in San José in Havana and
Cienfuegos, thus totaling three Plantas de Vivienda
Yugoslavia, PVYC, with a combined capacity of 4500
units per year. Knowledge transfer was an integral part
of the technology export, and the Cuban Ministry of
Construction decided to open another five Outdoor
National Factories in Guanajay, Santa Clara, Cam-
agüey, Cárdenas and Bayamo, each with a production
capacity of 500 units per year. The total construction
capacity of the IMS Žeželj plants in Cuba thus reached
7000 units per year. What made this export espe-
cially valuable and successful was the fact that local
experts continued experimenting with and improving
the system. They developed new methods of join-
ery, enlarged the spans, remodeled the prestressing
geometry, redesigned slabs, and other components,
and experimented with the design of other typologies,
such as schools and administrative buildings (Marín,
Navarro, IMS ’87, 253–63).
In an unusual turn of events, the IMS Žeželj system
then traveled from Cuba to Angola. On 5 November
1975, the so-called Operation Carlota began inAngola,
as Cuba dispatched combat troops to support the fight
of the People’s Movement for the Liberation ofAngola
(MPLA) in the Angolan CivilWar. Besides the troops,
the Cubans also sent one of the IMS Žeželj plants
with them, as a gift for the newly established Peo-
ple’s Republic of Angola. As the proxy war continued
to ravage the former Portuguese colony, the country’s
officials continued to look for assistance wherever
possible, turning to their most loyal allies. Social-
ist Yugoslavia was among them; the leadership of
Yugoslavia had supported the Angolan independence
struggle since 1961, when – among other UN mem-
bers – it was approached by the Workers’ Union of
Angola (UNTA) and asked to raise the question of
Angola and other Portuguese colonies in front of the
UN General Assembly (AJ, I-5-b/3-1). In 1976, an
official delegation from Angola paid a visit to the
Yugoslav Federal Committee for Economic Cooper-
ation with Developing Countries, in order to request
structural support in the rebuilding of the country.
Upon realizing that in Luanda, the capital of Angola,
an IMS Žeželj plant already existed, it was decided by
the Committee that structural assistance in construc-
tion should be based around this plant and the IMS
technology. An urban planning project was developed
by the team of the Institute IMS, led by prominent
urbanist Živojin Bata Karapešic, for a neighborhood
in the north of Luanda, as well as a catalog of typi-
fied housing conf igurations by the prominent architect
Branislav Karadžic. Finally, architect and researcher
Ivan Petrovic was tasked with developing a project for
a construction site for experimentation and training,
which consisted of two residential buildings of irregu-
lar, complex architecture, with the goal of instructing
the local engineers and workforce on how to use
the system and the plant. With the war still going
on, a small crew of local builders and experts from
Yugoslavia constructed two buildings on the site of
a former landfill, between the present-day streets of
Rua Helder Neto, Rua Pres. Marien Ngouabi and
Rua Joaquim Dom C. da Mata in Luanda, relatively
distant from the location for which the urban plan
had been developed. Paradoxically, the elements were
made in one of the older French plants, not the one
brought from Cuba. The local Ministry of Construction
315
Figure 6. Blueprints of the Lixeira experimental housing,
team lead Ivan Petrovic, ca. 1976. Source: personal archive
of Dr Ivan Petrovic.
authorized the enterprise Pre-Fabricados UEE to col-
laborate with the Invest-Import enterprise from Bel-
grade in order to manage all the necessary steps of the
process: design, supervision, import of the equipment,
etc. (Koprivica, IMS ’87, 283–8). However, according
to the available data, these were the only two buildings
built utilizing this technology, and it is not known what
happened to the plant in Luanda. Although aware of
the buildings, until recently local architects were not
aware of the origins of the Lixeira experimental site,
and it is still unclear whether production in the gifted
IMS Žeželj plant ever started (Jovanovic b, 175–80).
Almost simultaneously with theAngolan events, the
Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie I was dethroned by
the Derg – the Provisional Military Government (later
Council) of Ethiopia. The representatives of the Derg
had already contacted the Yugoslav government at the
beginning of 1975, and in 1976 they met with the repre-
sentatives of the Federal Secretariat of ForeignAffairs,
Secretariat of Defense, Secretary of the Interior, and
other officials. Although Ethiopia was never a tradi-
tional colony, because of the occupation by Italy, it
shared withYugoslavia common historical adversaries
a negative experience of European imperialism. The
friendly relations between Ethiopia and Yugoslavia
dated back to 1947, when the two countries supported
each other in their territorial disputes with neighbors:
Ethiopia’s over Eritrea and Yugoslavia’s over Trieste
claims. Common membership in the NAM made the
connections even stronger. Furthermore, “[…] the rev-
olutionary changes in Ethiopia have contributed to tra-
ditional friendship and bilateral cooperation becoming
even more important” (AJ, F574, f54) (Figure 6).
Figure 7. IMS Žeželj plant and the first building “Bole 100
AB” built using the system in AddisAbaba. Source: IMS ’87,
277.
In short, following the Derg coup, nothing changed
between the two countries, and economic cooperation
continued undisturbed, predominantly in the fields
of agriculture, industry, services and tourism. By
1983, the Ethiopian Building Construction Author-
ity (EBCA) decided to address the sluggish housing
development by importing the IMS Žeželj system,
via the Rudnap enterprise, which had already been
present on the Ethiopian market, where it took part
in the development of the country’s industrial capac-
ities. The contract was very specific: the plant was
supposed to produce 50,000 m2/year, 45% of which
should be components for five-storey housing, 45%
for 10-storey housing, and 10% for public buildings.
The plant totaling 8566 m2in area was built between
1984 and 1986 in the industrial zone of AddisAbaba,
which was infrastructurally fully equipped. This was
the first plant abroad to be primarily built and supplied
316
with the equipment provided byYugoslav companies,
with the exception of vibration tables imported from
West Germany and Sweden, and the concrete mixer
built in Italy. In the summer of 1986, an experimen-
tal site, “Model II”, was organized in the plant, to
train the plant’s local staff and builders for on-site
assembly. In February 1987, the assembly of the first
building utilizing the IMS Žeželj technology com-
menced. The “Bole 100 AB” building (Figure 7) was
designed by Bulgarian architect Matey Mateev, with
structural design by the EBCA civil engineer Asrat,
with experts from Yugoslavia supervising the process
(Seferovic, Mateev, IMS ’87, 265–82). In the years to
come, many buildings of various purposes and scales
would be erected using the IMS Žeželj plant around
Addis Ababa. However, it seems that the system’s
application never reached its full potential and failed
to proliferate, as the local scene today continues to
rely on traditional construction methods, even though
Ethiopian experts established that the IMS Žeželj
was up to five times more efficient and less costly
than the traditional methods (Mebratu 2019, 39–44,
106–9).
5 CONCLUSIONS
With its origins in the expansion of industrial capital-
ism, prefabricated construction is closely linked to the
dark histories of enslavement and colonization. How-
ever, prefabrication also had alternative genealogies
rooted in the networks of socialist and postcolonial
emancipation, which strove to elevate the masses
across the globe out of poverty and dependence. The
impact and success of these efforts are yet to be fully
evaluated – hopefully, more research will come from
the countries which received the technology – but they
should also be valorized for the path undertaken and
the obstacles that the actors involved strove to over-
come. (IMS) Žeželj is one of those agents of alternative
modernity, whose story is not only about construction,
but also the broader efforts behind it: technological
emancipation, locally sourced materials, and labor,
fostering the local technical and professional resource-
fulness, building self-confidence and assertiveness of
the local professional scene and industry.Fur thermore,
IMS Žeželj technology traveled abroad most often
by utilizing the anticolonial networks, established
through the Non-Aligned Movement: the plants were
either donated or purchased through low-profit deals
or favorable loans and covered by the interstate bilat-
eral agreements, while the technology transfer would
usually occur through the institute of the UN technical
assistance. Every project was treated as a unique learn-
ing opportunity, as the IMS Institute kept close contact
with the designers and the construction enterprises,
often leasing their employees via short-term contracts
to conduct the technology transfers where needed, and
kept records of the systems’ application. The real-
ity is that all countries that bought or received the
IMS Žeželj technology were able to freely experiment
with it, to modify and improve it to meet their own
needs, to employ the system and its clones for their
own purposes, testifying to the emancipatory character
of this technology. IMS is worth exploring and fur-
ther analyzing – even if one might occasionally doubt
the sincerity of its creator Žeželj and the Yugoslav
government, as even today, decades after the han-
dover, in some instances the technology continues to
produce results. After the system’s decades-long inter-
national application, regardless of its disappearance
from mainstream housing construction, it is evident
that its successes and failures correlate strongly with
the strength of the governance and the planning efforts
behind it, as well as its genuine incompatibility with
the neoliberal doctrine dominating the global econ-
omy. If the Manning House, was “the technology of
colonial expansion”, IMS Žeželj had demonstrated
it to be exactly the opposite – the technology of
anti-colonial emancipation.
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History of Construction Cultures – Mascarenhas-Mateus & Paula Pires (eds)
© 2021 Copyright the Author(s), ISBN 978-1-032-00202-6
Author index
Alarcón, E. 361
Albani, F. 337
Almagro, A. 134
Aranda Alonso, M. 33
Angillis, J. 447
Antuña, J. 361
Argenio, F. 562
Armstrong, C.D. 494
Atienza Fuente, J. 743
Barbosa, F. 594
Barbot, M. 166
Bell, P.W.R. 734
Benincampi, I. 49
Bertels, I. 447
Bologna, A. 509
Brunner, S. 275
Bulckaen, L. 538
Burgassi, V. 457
Calvo-Salve, M.A. 374
Capurso, G. 570
Cardellicchio, L. 786
Carvais, R. 166
Caston, P.S.C. 217
Chalvatzi, A.M. 669
Chen, X. 77
Chiba, H. 779
Chrimes, M.M. 463
Château-Dutier, E. 166
Coetzer, N.R. 262
Como, M.T. 41
Cook, L. 176
Coomans, T. 85
Creba, A. 350
d’Amelio, M.G. 578
de la Cuerda, R.H. 524
Degraeve, M. 479
del Cueto, J.I. 361
Dessales, H. 750
Devos, R. 538
di Donato, D. 602
Dobbels, J. 183, 487
El-Ashmouni, M.M. 291
Engelmann, I. 201
Espion, B. 530, 772
Fernandes, E. 594
Fernandes, J. 471
Ferreira, T. C. 594
Flores-Sasso, V. 249
Franco de Mendonça, L. 268
Gantner, M. 440
Garcia Fritz, J. 256
Gavello, C. 509
Giannetti, I. 416
Gil-Crespo, I.-J. 126
Gondo, T. 100, 779
González Meza, E. 368
González-Uriel, A. 126
Greco, L. 93
Grieco, L. 578
Guardigli, L. 209
Haddadi, R. 502, 517
Hamzeian, B. 632
Hancock, L. 712
Hartshorn, H. 685
Hayasahi, S. 779
Hays, B. 57
Heinemann, H.A. 720
Holzer, S.M. 757
Huerta, S. 433
Hutton, J. 350
Inglisa, A. 329
Iori, T. 424, 562
John, K. 11
Jovanovi´c, J. 285, 311
Korensky, V. 693
Korwan, D. 706
Lampariello, B. 698
Langouche, L. 650
Li, H. 71
Lombardi, A. 49
Lucente, R. 93
Luzuriaga, M. 382
Manzo, A. 3
Mändel, M. 345
Marques Caiado, M. 546
Martire, F. 570
Mascarenhas-Mateus, J. 546
Massafra, A. 726
Mazzanti, C. 26
Mehndiratta, R.R. 303
Mehta, V. 303
Menegaldo, A.B. 471
Michiels, T. 149
Mochi, G. 209
Monier, F. 750
Mornati, S. 416
Murphy, E. 149
Mustieles Granell, F. 368
Nègre, V. 166
Nijland, T.G. 720
Novoa Peña, S. 368
Nuzzolese, C. 610
O’Dwyer, D.W. 403
Orozco Barrera, F. B. 19
Orsel, E.D. 232
Ortiz Colom, J. 63
Pan, Y. 77
Panicker, S.K. 297
Pereira, R. 471
Pernin, J. 765
Petzold Rodríguez, A. 368
Pimenta do Vale, C. 554
Pinho, J. B. 657
Pinto, S.M.G. 157
Póvoas, R.F. 554
Porrino, M. 677
Prarat, M. 643
Prati, D. 726
Predari, G. 726
Prieto-Vicioso, E. 249
Provost, M. 530
Rabasa-Díaz, E. 126
Ragueneau, M. 772
Rinke, M. 502, 517
Rodríguez García, A. 524
Rosado, A.C. 141
Russnaik, K.M. 238
Russo, M. 392
Salmi, B. 726
Sampaio, M.L. 554
Sanjurjo Álvarez, A. 126
Santa Ana, L. 410
Santa Ana, P. 410
Schaaf, U. 643
Schmid, B. 625
Schrijver, L. 447
Schäfer, J. 225
Sementsov, S.V. 664
Sire, S. 772
795
Skansi, L. 285
Souviron, J. 321
Spada, F. 586
Stracchi, P. 618, 786
Talenti, S. 108
Teodosio, A. 108
Tombesi, P. 786
Tosone, A. 602
Trelstad, D. 149
Van de Voorde, S. 479
Vandyck, F. 479
Veiga, I. 546
Vitti, P. 119
Volpiano, M. 457
Weber, C. 625
Wouters, I. 487
Xu, Y. 85
Zamperini, E. 193
Zhang, J. 85
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