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Mon, September 8, 2008 |
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July 22nd, 2008, By Richard Trapunski
MoMa Aims to Make Prefab Fab
 The home of the future, but probably not your future home. The NewsTo the everyday homeowner, the term "prefab" connotes cost-saving dwellings – trailer parks and mobile homes. But New York's Museum of Modern Art, always the provocateur, is looking to challenge these perceptions in its original new two-part exhibition, Home Delivery: Fabricating the Modern Dwelling. Behind the NewsThe exhibit's true innovation is not limited to its thought-provoking historical survey of prefabrication, although that is a major component. What sets it apart from other such architectural explorations is its insistence on putting its principles into practice, not in a gallery setting, but in a real world environment. The MoMa has commissioned five architects, chosen from a pool of over 400, to erect actualized prefab dwellings in a vacant lot adjacent to the museum.
By moving the exhibit out of the gallery it becomes more than a collection of abstract ideas, but rather a tangible reality, one that can be viewed and explored. Patrons have the ability to enter the houses and imagine themselves living in these futuristic freshly-assembled abodes. But the assembled houses are an extension of the gallery exhibition, so they are best not to be viewed in isolation. It all begins on the MoMa's sixth floor, where viewers can take a look at the historical roots of pre-fabricated home designs. Here the curators intend to show how these designs can be traced back to some of the most innovative architects, such high-profile Richard Rogers, Le Corbousier and the omnipresent Frank Lloyd Wright. It all works to challenge the engrained notion that a Home (not a house) is erected on a plot of land and enjoyed as personal property. This Lockian notion is not only archaic in nature, but it is also becoming less and less practical. You've heard the schpiel before – overpopulation, dwindling resources, the need to do everything that Al Gore says – so I don't have to tell you why prefabrication is, if not a necessity, at least a possibility for "sustainable living." If nothing else, we can see the principles in operation in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. When many New Orleans residents lost their homes, they adopted prefab houses, assembled offsite and transported to the Big Easy. Home Delivery fully realizes the term "multimedia" by utilizing film, architectural models, drawings, blueprints, photographs and reconstructions in order to fully demonstrate how innovative thinking can make prefab housing a new standard in architectural design. Once these ideas have been planted in your head, you can stroll out to the lot and see the principles in action in the form of completed houses. These homes, assembled by Kieran Timberlake Associates, Jeremy Edmiston and Douglas Gauthier, Horden Cherry Lee Architects / Haack + Höpfner Architects, Massachusetts Institute of Technology School of Architecture and Planning / Associate Professor Lawrence Sass, and Oskar Leo Kaufmann, have stressed both process and product. During the construction, the designers have all kept blogs on the MoMa's website in order to track the process of the assembly. It could all be a pipe dream, but maybe in the future we'll all be living in houses that are transported to us by trucks. If so then Home Delivery is actually a presentation of the future. How could you not want to see that? Comments
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