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GEORGIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY ATLANTA . GEORGIA 30332 OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT April 17, 1968 Mr. Cecil Alexander Chairman Housing Resources Committee City Hall Atlanta, Georgia Dear Mr. Alexander: I am writing in response to your requ est for an evaluation of the presentation made to the Construction and Design Subcommittee of the Housing Resources Committee by Mr. McNamara on Tuesday, March 26. You will recall tha-'c this was a presentation of a new concept for the fabrication of residential units. This concept involved p:uring on site, by use of vacuum forms, concrete elements of a standardized nature which would become elements of multi-family residential buildings. The standardized elements could be varied from job to job and from unit to unit in such a way as to make them adaptable to the needs of various sites and architectural plans. It is my opinion, as Chainnan of the Construct ion and Design Subcommittee, and that of those with whom I have talked who were present at this slide presentation, that the conc·ept is a good one but that it is at this point in time only a conc ept and not a proven plan. It is my opinion that Mr. McNamar a should find a developer who is willing to develop this idea on an actual building project involving a number of multi-family units . If such a developer can be f ound, this may well be an excellent concept to utilize in the model city program as it does r epresent one innovation i n the field of attempting to provide low income housing . The model city program should be considered because of a n ecessity for r equiring a reasonable sized t ra ct of land in order to build enough units to analyze the validity of Mr . McNamara 1 s proposed technique. It i s, after all, an experimental project and one which is yet to be proven in the field. There are many possible applications of pre-fabricated elements within these units which should be explored, but which may be restricted at this time by va_rious codes. If max_·. :Jm saving is to be attained in this kind of project, the use of prefabricated fixtures and materials ~ust be allowed subject to carefully drawn requirements. �Mr. Cecil Alexander page 2. In summary, it is our belief that this is a good concept but that it is only a concept at this time and that it does require actual· construction of a number of units in order to properly evaluate the technique on any objective basis. Sincerely yours, Edwin D. Harrison President EDH:lhs cc: Colonel Malcolm Jones/ Mr. Moreland Smith Mr. Bob Winn • �