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Joseph Paxton's Crystal Palace, built in six months between 1850-51, exemplified the use of cast-iron, which was designed specifically for demounting and reassembly. Like Paxton, Buckminster Fuller's primary
concerns for portable structures were focused on the implementation of mass production, lightness of materials, and determining the minimal weight.
Fuller's proposal, the Dymaxion House (dynamic/maximum/ions: Dymaxion), was
patented in 1928 and was to be built for the 1933 World's Fair. The design was influenced by technology borrowed from boat building and fishing work and the house was light enough to be deployed by aircraft.
A fascination with an automated-machine-based process was of interest to Ray and Charles Eames in 1948 when they designed their Case Study house for
John Entenza's Arts and Architecture magazine. The use of prefabricated, commercially available products made up the component pieces which were used as a palette from which 'good design' could be composed and efficiently constructed.
The use of scaffolding as a simple assembly procedure was used most notably by Tadao Ando who designed the portable Karaza theater, built in 15 days in 1987. Additionally, one the most well-known portable buildings is the Teatro del Monde designed by Aldo Rossi for the Venice Biennale in 1979.
Based on sixteenth-century floating pavilions, this temporary structure was built from steel scaffolding supported underneath by a large steel barge.
More recently, in Vietnam and the Gulf Wars, portable and demountable units known as MUST (Medical Unit, Self-contained, Transportable) have been developed by and for the military and are used around the world where speed of deployment and immediate proximity to areas of conflict are necessary.
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