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In New York: Prefab Houses Seen as Works of Art
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This cellophane-wrapped prefabricated home of the future is on display at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art through Oct. 20. |
The evolution of prefabricated housing, from its beginning in 1833 to concepts for the present and future, is on display at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York and online through Oct. 20.
“Home Delivery: Fabricating the Modern Dwelling” chronologically examines the historical significance and contemporary role that systems-built technologies play in the world of architecture.
Home Delivery also includes five contemporary factory-built homes — including one made of cellophane and one for Hurricane Katrina victims in New Orleans — that were built on the museum grounds.
The show was organized by Barry Bergdoll, MoMA's chief curator of architecture.
The First Steps: A Prefabricated Wall System
The first prefabricated construction system is attributed to Chicago builder Augustine Taylor, who developed his “balloon frame” system in 1833 in answer to the young city’s housing shortage. The system used a wood frame built from two-by-fours and two-by-sixes set closely together with studs, cross members and sheathing placed within and over the frame ― with all of it held together by manufactured cut-iron nails.
The system eliminated the need for highly-crafted mortised beam fittings and the skilled craftsman who made them. It enabled an entire wall to be built off-site and reduced construction time.
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The Burst*008 computer-generated design house |
The First Replicated Kit Home: Headed for Australia
The first documented example of a replicated building system kit home was the Manning Portable Colonial Cottage for Emigrants, created in the 1830s by London carpenter H. Manning for his son, who was emigrating to Australia and who found a market for the homes there, according to the exhibit. The components of the kit home were precut so they could be stored easily in the hull of a ship and sent to Australia. Manning sold dozens of his home to Australians during the next few years.
Homes Built by Ford, Thomas Edison and Sears and Roebuck
By 1882, N.R. Good had patented a portable summer home, which may have been the precursor to the U.S. Army tents used by Mobile Army Surgical Hospital (M.A.S.H.) units during the Korean War.
The exhibit also includes archival newsreel-type footage from 1919 by the Ford Motor Company portraying the popularity of assembly-line manufacturing and how a “ready-made home” can be built in a factory and delivered on site.
The “Home Made” newsreel does over-promise a bit by showing the house being built in little more than a week — leaving out all the construction detail after the framing is erected.
Wood was not the only prefabricated solution being invented at that time. In 1917, Thomas Edison developed the “Single Pour Concrete System” to build a different type of prefabricated home. He sold about 100 of these homes to New Jersey residents.
Less than 15 years later, another inventor, Walter Gropius, created an insulated Copper House.
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The 76-square-foot micro house | Maybe the most successful of the early prefabricated homes were the mail-order kit homes sold by Sears, Roebuck and Co. The company sold and shipped more than 100,000 mail-order homes to customers all over the country between 1908 and 1940. The kits included all the materials needed to build a home, from lumber and shingles to flooring and paint. They also included a detailed construction guide.
A Glimpse Into the Future
The five contemporary or future prefabricated homes built on the museum grounds for “Home Delivery” seek “to advance current research into new materials and applications of digital fabrication to create diverse housing types from vacation homes to replacement houses for populations at risk,” according to the final blog entry of the exhibit process.
The homes include a five-story, steel-frame townhouse wrapped in cellophane; a 76-square-foot micro compact home with only enough room for a small coffee mug and cooking utentils; a one-room, digitally fabricated “shotgun house” created as a disaster relief solution for areas like New Orleans; a modular System3 home made of modular 570 square-foot components that enable the home to grow as the owner’s family grows; and an almost completely computer-designed Burst*008 home that enables the architect and client to visualize the new home almost instantly.
“Home Delivery” features a total of 84 architectural projects, spanning 180 years of prefabrication. It includes film, architectural models, original drawings and blueprints, photographs and patents that demonstrate the significance and impact of systems-built technologies in the home building industry through the years.
To view the exhibit online, visit www.moma.org/homedelivery.
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The New Orleans home under construction at MoMA |
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