At the Venice Architecture Biennale 2016, Portuguese architect Samuel Gonçalves has installed three hollow concrete forms to promote the Gomos System, a modular housing system based on concrete sewer drainage pipes.

Each of the concrete modules follows has the same shape and dimension of a standard concrete sewer pipe. This means that the housing components can be easily and fluidly manufacted by simply modifying slightly existing lines of concrete sewer production. As Gonçalves explains ‘”It’s not about inventing, but about reinterpreting – we take a pre-existent constructive system often used in water drainage infrastructures and we make it a liveable constructive system.’

Clad with timber and slate
And key to a prefabricated system, speed is of the essence here. The components are designed for assembly within a factory and then assembled on site in a mere three days. You can watch a video fo the assembly process here.

Unlike some other prefabricated systems, what is quite remarkable here is the design flexibility afforded. The segments can be put together to create flat, pitched or gabled roof forms, for example. The segments can of course be broken down at any point and reassembled elsewhere.

The Gomos System was developed by Goncalves at his studio located at the Science and Technology Park of University Porto with the aim of helping to alleviate Portugal’s current housing crisis.