zip-up House By Su and Richard Rogers
The Zip-Up House was designed by Su and Richard Rogers in 1967 for The House of Today competition. The house was never built, although the concept was later used for Richard Rogers' parents house. The house was designed to be assembled anywhere, adjustable jacks freed it from the tyranny of the site contours. The house is fabricated of ring-shaped, insulated sandwich panels which form its roof and walls. The plan of the house was intended to be completely flexible, the room spaces could be reconfigured by the inhabitants, even bathroom locations could be changed in a weekend.
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1. steel floor joist 2. steel panels 3. insulation 4. adjustable jack 5. internal floor boards 6. concrete pile foundation scale 1:100 side elevation
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A scale 1:100 plan
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scale 1:10
load distribution
The zip-up house was design to give the resident as much freedom as they want in personalizing the internal space. All the internal wall can be move around very quickly and fixed with little effort, allowing residents to create their own spaces around the house. For this reason the internal wells were not load bearing structure, which meant all the external structures had to act as a one single primary load bearing elliptical structure that spreads the load around the building and on to the adjustable jacks.