Perrinepod

A record of a great thing.

The proposition

Between 2006 and 2007 the practice drew a system, not a building.

A self-contained module of pre-cast polished concrete, glass and aluminium — stainless-steel kitchen, marble or terrazzo wet area — cast and craned and bolted into a complete house. It floated above the ground for a thermal break and for cross-ventilation. Solar blades sat on the glazing; solar hot water and water recycling were built in; the whole house plugged into a single service point. It was rated earthquake-proof and cyclone-proof. Affordable. Mass-produced.[^1]

It could be left as a house. Or stacked to many storeys.[^2]

It was patented in the United States and design-registered at home. We believed, and many honourable and good people with us then, that a registered shape was a kept shape.

The argument it carried

Twenty years before the Perrinepod, the practice was already arguing one point, house by house, in single dwellings on single blocks: that the Australian house had begun to mistake size for shelter, and image for life. The Perrinepod was the counter-argument for genuinely sustainable housing; made against that tilt shift, and made at industrial scale.

"Living spaces have become as transient and irrelevant as fashion. It's no longer a look for a generation; the look of 'now' only lasts for a three- to four-year period."[^3]

"We can't afford to air-condition 500 square metres on suburban blocks where you have to drive an hour to get there… we can't afford a million or two million dollars to build a house, which people only live in for five years."[^4]

"It's not a 'look at me' statement, but a home that's comfortable, sustainable, stylish and above all functional."[^5]

The system, briefly

Three sizes — one, two and three bedrooms — produced in a small set of modular footprints. The standard finish was white sand and white concrete; the building read as a single object in the landscape. At Clairault Estate in Margaret River — the first luxury resort in Western Australia to take a Perrinepod — local sand and stone were used in the mix:

"The Perrinepod disappears into the landscape and fits their context 100 percent."[^6]

And — the line that held all of it together —

"Ours is a revolutionary system… it's able to be applied to multi-storey construction, with modules that stack together."[^7]

The lift-off

Public sale opened in early March 2007. A prototype was set down at the naval base on the coast and shown to the world at the end of August — a complete two-bedroom dwelling that had not existed the week before. Extra-ordinary Western Australian entrepreneurs came on board. The Housing Minister came. The local Member came. A hundred and fifty of the State's industry, government and press came and stood inside a house that had been, days earlier, a stack of moulds.

In November the Housing Minister rose in Parliament and told the House that the State was preparing to trial the Perrinepod for its own people's housing. A register of the interested opened, and grew. Eminent journals — here and across the world — carried the thing in their pages.[^8]

It was a barometer of the optimism of those years.

The international record

In the years that followed, the Perrinepod was reported as a Western Australian story by The West Australian and apartments WA, and — independently — as an international one: in the United Kingdom by sustain' — Built Environment Matters; in France by Stuff; in Switzerland by AVENUE, Peugeot's customer magazine, under the cover line Visionen — Mobiles Wohnen; and in Spain by Arquitectura y Diseño, in a 2012 survey of European prefabricated-concrete housing.[^9]

The Swiss feature reached for the cleanest analogy:

"Plug and play."[^10]

What it was, finally

After every seed investor and the practice had given every drop of blood and cash and spirit; they were defeated. Change is difficult. Change that challenges the system is brutal.

The Perrinepod is no longer in production. The company that carried it passed, in time, into other's hands; the practice returned to design and architecture rather than industry.

This page is a record for those that gave so much to such a noble idea. All of who were heroic and noble. It is here because the Perrinepod was a necessary thing. It still is a necessary thing— climate before composition, the order of operations a building requires when you have stopped pretending that 500 square metres of conditioned air on a suburban block is sustainable, ethical, or affordable. It proved, by four countries of independent coverage, that the proposition could be carried. It proved by deployment to one of the World's premier global companies that the product could deliver.

It was, in its purest reading, A house with nothing more, and nothing less, than is needed: For Every and Anyone and Anywhere.

[^1]: Materials, certification, affordability and mass-production discussed across sustain' — Built Environment Matters (UK, 2008); apartments — Western Australia homes & living, Annual 07; green — sustainable architecture and landscape design (Sept–Nov 2007); insite (Spring 2007); The West Australian Real Estate (11 August 2007); and AVENUE — Peugeot (Switzerland, 1/2008). [^2]: Stacking discussed in the same press of the period; see sustain', apartments WA, green, The West Australian and Stuff (France, May 2007). [^3]: Jean-mic Perrine, quoted in sustain' — Built Environment Matters, vol. 08 iss. 03 (UK, 2008), p. 45; the opening sentence also appears in green — sustainable architecture and landscape design, Sept–Nov 2007. [^4]: Jean-mic Perrine, quoted in Emma Leask, "What the Future Looks Like," apartments — Western Australia homes & living, Annual 07, pp. 85–87. [^5]: Jean-mic Perrine, quoted in sustain', op. cit., and in apartments WA, op. cit. — the formulation appears in two independent sources. [^6]: Jean-mic Perrine, quoted in apartments WA, op. cit. Clairault Estate, Margaret River, is named in apartments WA and The West Australian as the first luxury resort in Western Australia to install a Perrinepod. [^7]: Jean-mic Perrine, quoted in Natasha Granath, "Innovative homes a winner — Prefab Housing," The West Australian, Real Estate, 11 August 2007, p. 51. [^8]: The November 2007 statement was made in the Legislative Assembly of the Western Australian Parliament by the Minister for Housing. [^9]: sustain' — Built Environment Matters, vol. 08 iss. 03 (UK, 2008); Dorothée Bécart, "Brèves du futur — Jeu de construction géant," Stuff N° 63 (France, May 2007), p. 60; "Mit Modulen mobil: Das flexible System des Perrinepod," AVENUE — Peugeot (Switzerland), Ausgabe 1/2008; David Quesada, "Arquitectura Prêt-à-Porter," Arquitectura y Diseño nº 135 (Spain, Feb. 2012). [^10]: AVENUE (Peugeot, Switzerland), Ausgabe 1/2008. The German original reaches for a direct parallel to Apple's iPod.