Mashadipati: The rocket scientist’s guide to housing

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Housing is rocket science

Faced with a dearth of housing production in the 1960s and '70s, the US embarked on what is now considered the country's most ambitious federal housing program in history. It wasn't led by developers or builders or even architects; it was helmed by a rocket scientist — with expertise in nuclear reactor propulsion.

Operation Breakthrough was a moonshot from the Department of Housing and Urban Development to build 26 million homes using advanced manufacturing and pre-fabrication technology. It leaned on the expertise of military and civilian scientists, as well as the aerospace and defense industry, to research new building systems and develop prototypes of modular homes that could be rolled off the assembly line fast enough for HUD to reach its goal in just 10 years.

The brainchild of Housing Secretary George Romney and Harold Finger, a former NASA top official who joined HUD, Operation Breakthrough had the potential to reshape the housing industry — if only it had reached the final frontier. But as one historian tells contributor Zach Mortice, the program was "doomed from the outset," having never gained traction within the Nixon administration.

Drawings of some of those prototypes — including fantastical assembly mechanisms and home designs that border on science fiction — currently line the walls of "Breakthrough: Housing Futures," an exhibit curated by University of Illinois at Chicago architecture professor Alexander Eisenschmidt at the National Public Housing Museum in Chicago. Technical manuals further illustrate the program's ambition and rigor, offering lessons for today's housing crisis.

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The rocket scientist’s guide to housing