The Machine-made Beaufort House, Canberra, ACT

The Machine-made Beaufort House, Canberra, ACT

Arthur Baldwinson's dream of the “machine-made house” was part of the early 20th century modernist vision of standardised housing with factory-produced interchangeable components, modular plans and elevations produced at a price accessible to every citizen. Unashamedly drawing from industrial design practice, the post-war Australian standardised steel house has international kinship with developments in Europe, the USA and Britain.

Steel machine-made Beaufort House (Type 2, three bedrooms). Cox and Cowper Street, Ainslie, ACT. Erected 1947. Sold for £3000 in 1954.

The ambitious prefabricated steel house known as “the Beaufort House” was designed and developed by the Beaufort Division of the Commonwealth Department of Aircraft Production (DAP) located at Fishermen’s Bend, Melbourne and Essendon Airport. The highly efficient Beaufort Division manufactured twin engine Beaufort Bombers under license during the 1939-45 War. The Beaufort House was designed by Arthur Baldwinson (Chief Architect) and the staff of the Beaufort Division.

As the 1939-45 War progressed and an allied victory was assured, Australian defence industries began to wind down. The Beaufort Division of the Department of Aircraft Production began to look for new products and markets for their surplus post-war manufacturing capacity. With a forecast of housing shortages from the Commonwealth Directorate of Post-War Reconstruction, the mass production of housing and/or housing materials seemed a logical path to follow.

While Baldwinson’s gable-fronted Beaufort House did not follow the form of the by-now modernist programme of flat roofs and open plan interiors, it provided the substance of modernism: a carefully designed “scientific kitchen” with carefully-calculated counter heights and traffic patterns, labour-saving built-in appliances and electric hot water, low or minimum maintenance, in-built heating and cooling integrated within the structure and mass-produced modular construction that allowing infinite expansion of the basic unit.

As Baldwinson explained in the Beaufort House brochure, the house was designed with standard units, simply bolted together; the 914 mm wall panels (three foot grid) were interchangeable with window and door panels. Sheet steel was sheared and formed (pressed) for strength and spot-welded into components.

“The wall panel steel sheeting is designed as a stressed skin giving tremendous bracing strength to the structure,” he writes in 1945. “Insulation against heat and cold is provided with two-inch thickness of rockwool packed into walls and ceiling, giving an insulation value far greater than orthodox brick construction. […] The living room has a special wood fuel fireplace constructed as an air-conditioning unit with ducts conveying warmed air to the dinette and bedroom. An electric hot water installation is connected to a stainless steel kitchen sink and to all fittings in the bathroom and laundry.”

Eight models of the steel house were designed but only one prototype had been fabricated by the first exhibition date in 1946. While it is not clear if all models proceeded to prototype, two types were built (Type 2 and Type 8) and supplied as public projects in Melbourne and Canberra. The Beaufort’s first public appearance was in 1946 in Treasury Gardens, Melbourne and its second debut was in 1947 in the Canberra suburb of Ainslie (shown above).

In Australia, the Beaufort House was conceived, designed and developed as an efficient, low-priced, mass-produced housing unit for a permanent family home. In Britain where prefabricated housing was developed to cope with housing losses from wartime bombing raids, the housing was seen as “temporary” or somehow “ersatz”. In Australia, the display and marketing of the Beaufort home stressed, permanence, durability, ease of assembly and contemporary living values. Transported by lorry, the Beaufort could be erected quickly and efficiently by a team of builders using conventional hand tools.

What were the problems associated with living in a steel machine-made house? The Director of the Housing Division of ACT Works and Services wrote to the Director of the Beaufort Division in 1947 describing two defects of the Canberra house.

• Rusting of the load-bearing steel channels forming the wall plates supporting the wall joists. [Probably from moisture accumulating from condensation on inner walls].

• Condensation on the underside of the roof falling on the fibrous plaster ceiling tiles and producing staining. The first resident of the Canberra Beaufort House explained that “during the frosty season the “ceiling is almost permanently wet”.

While the heat transfer qualities of sheet steel clearly produced the condensation problems associated with the house, no intrinsic defects were found in the Beaufort House. With condensation issues resolved, no further complaints were received and the house was rated by its earliest Canberra occupants as “comfortable”.

As the anonymous reviewer “Domus” wrote in the Australasian Handyman in 1946. “… A home […] must provide the answer to the customer who asks, “How can I obtain a comfortable home, modern conveniences and minimum of upkeep at a price which I can afford?” “Domus” concluded that the Beaufort House serves its purpose: “There is no possible doubt that the Beaufort Home must play a very important part in the housing scheme in Australia. Its ease of construction, and also the possibility of simple additions makes it more desirable for those investing in a small home, which gives the opportunity of being added to as families increase.”

This essay appeared in the Construction History Society Newsletter, 82:August 2008.