Home Delivery & BURST*: MoMA Launches Online Journal for Prefab Exhibition

2008

Apr

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MoMA, as you’ll recall, has commissioned five architects to build prefabricated homes in the parking lot adjacent to the museum where 2008 Pritzker Prize winner Jean Nouvel’s 53 West 53rd Street tower will eventually rise. Home Delivery: Fabricating the Modern Dwelling will open up on July 20 and feature residences designed by KieranTimberlake Associates, Lawrence Sass of MIT, Douglas Gauthier and Jeremy Edmiston, Oskar Leo Kaufmann and Albert Ruf, and Richard Horden. The museum recently launched a blog that details each team’s progress in creating and assembling its respective homes for the exhibition; the first dwelling will arrive at the site for assembly on May 22.

In yesterday’s entry, Gauthier and Edmiston describe how their BURST* house, which was conceived as a “series of bands” dedicated to community, family, and private living, each distinguished through a shift in the home’s floor level, was designed to be carbon-efficient. The designers call BURST* a “paradox,” pointing out its small footprint and compact interior that “feels expansive because of its open communication with the outdoors.” The first BURST* entry includes a video showing construction of the concept’s first house from start to finish.

It’s important to note that the curatorial statement on the MoMA blog acknowledges prefabricated construction’s potential “as a prime solution to a host of pressing [environmental] needs . . . [stemming from] increasing concern about such issues as sustainability and the swelling global population.” In addition to presenting five dwellings that each incorporate different elements of sustainable design, Home Delivery will also trace the history of prefabrication in modern architecture through various mediums, including historical documents from such architects as Frank Lloyd Wright. We’re thrilled at the prospect of such a critical exhibition at the intersection of modernism and sustainability coming to the heart of Midtown, and we’ll be following MoMA’s blog closely in advance of May 22.