For nearly a century, architects have tried to solve the housing problem through industrial production, prefabrication, smaller homes and innovative materials. From Buckminster Fuller’s Dymaxion house to today’s tiny homes and co-living projects, the goal has remained largely unchanged: build homes that are better, faster and cheaper.
Yet history suggests that architecture alone cannot deliver affordable housing.
In 1927, American architect and inventor Richard Buckminster Fuller proposed the Dymaxion house, a lightweight aluminium structure designed to be manufactured on an assembly line like a car. Fuller believed industrial production could make housing affordable to the middle class in the same way it had transformed the automobile industry.
Despite attracting thousands of orders, only two prototypes were ultimately built.
The problem identified nearly a century ago continues to challenge architects today. Pilar Cano-Lasso and Ignacio de la Vega, co-founders of Spanish architectural studio delaVegaCanolasso and the prefabricated housing brand Tini Living, say residential architecture has always struggled to reconcile industrial efficiency with the need to respond to individual locations and lifestyles.
From Usonian homes to prefabrication
Frank Lloyd Wright pursued a similar goal in the late 1930s with his Usonian houses, designed to provide affordable family homes for the American middle class.
The houses used local materials, open-plan layouts and strong connections to the surrounding landscape. But the gap between architectural ambition and actual cost emerged immediately. One of the first Usonian homes, designed for the Friedman family in New York, was initially budgeted at $30,000 but ultimately cost more than twice that amount.
After World War II, French architect Jean Prouvé attempted to address an even more urgent housing shortage through industrial prefabrication.
His lightweight homes were designed to be manufactured in workshops and rapidly assembled on site. France commissioned Prouvé to develop mass-produced housing for refugees and displaced people after the war.
Hundreds of units were produced, but the government project never reached the scale he envisioned. His factory eventually went bankrupt in 1953, while prefabricated housing remained a niche rather than becoming a mainstream solution.
When the future became a product
The post-war housing experiment took a different direction in the United States, where prefabricated homes were increasingly marketed as consumer products.
In the 1960s, department store Macy’s began selling complete vacation homes under the Leisurama brand. The packages included not only the house and plot but also furniture and household equipment. Around 200 units were sold within six weeks.
Another attempt to rethink affordable housing came in 1968 with Finland’s Futuro House, designed by Matti Suuronen. Originally conceived as a rapidly heated ski cabin, the futuristic fiberglass structure could be transported and assembled almost anywhere.
Its designers soon saw potential for mass-produced housing. But the innovative materials also made production expensive, while the 1973 oil crisis pushed up the cost of plastics. Only around 100 Futuro houses were ultimately produced.
Japan’s Metabolist movement pursued another version of the same idea. Kishō Kurokawa’s Nakagin Capsule Tower, completed in Tokyo in 1972, consisted of 140 prefabricated capsules designed to provide compact and affordable accommodation for office workers.
The capsules were intended to be replaced every 25 years. In practice, none were replaced. Maintenance problems eventually left the building abandoned, and the tower was dismantled in 2022.
The problem is bigger than architecture
The repeated failures point to a broader problem: affordable housing is not simply a design challenge.
“It’s much easier to present housing as a technical problem, rather than as a political one,” says urban studies researcher Erik Harley.
According to Harley, new housing concepts regularly arrive with attractive names and the promise of solving affordability through design. But land prices, financing, ownership structures and regulation often determine the final cost far more than the architectural concept itself.
Spain’s construction boom before the 2008 financial crisis illustrates the problem. Hundreds of thousands of homes were built, but increased construction did not automatically make housing accessible to those who needed it.
“Architecture can greatly improve how we live… but it can’t decide who lives where, or at what price,” Harley says.
The architects behind Tini Living reach a similar conclusion. They argue that prefabrication can reduce construction times and help control costs, but changes to financing, regulations and bureaucracy are also necessary.
One obstacle is that some banks do not treat a home being manufactured in an industrial facility as conventional collateral. Financing may only be released once the modules reach the construction site, creating an additional barrier for the prefabricated housing industry.
Can the affordable housing dream become reality?
Tini Living has demonstrated that prefabricated construction can accelerate the building process and improve cost control compared with traditional construction of similar quality. But its architects also stress that affordable does not necessarily mean cheap, particularly when using durable natural materials and skilled craftsmanship.
They expect traditional construction to become increasingly expensive as skilled labour becomes scarcer.
Journalist Pedro Bravo, author of Back Then, This Was All City, places the issue within an even wider economic framework. He argues that housing has become increasingly treated as a market and that concepts such as co-living and tiny homes are also being promoted through the language of consumer marketing.
The debate is not new. In the 19th century, Friedrich Engels argued in The Housing Question that housing shortages were closely connected to the economic structure of cities and property ownership.
Almost 100 years after Fuller imagined a house costing as much as a car, the technological barriers have largely changed. Architects know how to build faster, lighter and more efficiently than ever.
The unresolved question is who controls the land, how housing is financed and regulated, and who can ultimately afford to live in it.
The history of affordable housing therefore suggests that the architectural utopia is technically achievable. Turning it into a lasting reality, however, requires changes far beyond the drawing board.
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