Degrees of Failure: Operation Breakthrough Housing Systems in Kalamazoo

In the early 1970s the U.S. Department of Housingand Urban Development funded a massive program toencourage industrialization in the production of housingin the United Stated. Operation Breakthrough, asthe experiment was named, began with lofty technicalaspirations, but it ultimately revealed the risks ofexperimentation with low-cost housing. It proved veryquickly to be an embarrassing failure and could notdemonstrate the marketability of factory-producedhousing methods. Certainly, technical challenges contributed,but the experiment’s failure had much to dowith aesthetic and social factors. This paper highlightsa small piece of the Operation Breakthrough experimentto help explain its inadequacies. In particular,it examines the work of two housing manufactures,Levitt Building Systems, Inc. and Material SystemsCorporation, which contributed houses to the prototypesite in Kalamazoo, Michigan. While thesemanufacturers produced comparably scaled dwellingunits, they took notably dissimilar approaches todesign and production, and the fates of their effortshave proved to be starkly different.

Volume Editors
Luis Francisco Rico-Gutierrez & Martha Thorne

ISBN
978-1-944214-08-1