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West Lot

About

The Home Delivery Installation Journal offers a "behind the scenes" look into the entire process of creating and erecting prefabricated architecture. As part of the exhibition Home Delivery: Fabricating the Modern Dwelling, which will be on view at The Museum of Modern Art from July 20 to October 20, 2008, the Museum's Department of Architecture and Design selected five architects to display full-scale prefabricated houses in the outdoor space to the west of the Museum's main building. The five firms and individuals chosen to participate have agreed to contribute weekly progress updates to the Web site several months in advance of the exhibition, demonstrating how the processes of design, fabrication, shipping, and assembly unfold to create five finished homes in time for the exhibition's public opening. The five architects were each assigned a day of the week: KieranTimberlake Associates LLP of Philadelphia (Mondays); Douglas Gauthier and Jeremy Edmiston of New York (Tuesdays); Oskar Leo Kaufmann and Albert Rüf of Dornbirn, Austria (Wednesdays); Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Associate Professor Lawrence Sass (Thursdays); and Richard Horden of Horden Cherry Lee Architects in London (Fridays). In addition, members of the MoMA curatorial team submit commentary each Saturday. Upon completion of the projects, this Web site will expand to encompass the entire exhibition, which includes pivotal works from nearly two centuries of prefabricated homes.

Curatorial Statement

Home Delivery: Fabricating the Modern Dwelling offers the most thorough examination of the historical and contemporary significance of factory-produced architectures to date. With increasing concern about such issues as sustainability and the swelling global population, prefabrication has taken center stage as a prime solution to a host of pressing needs. The viability of prefabricated structures has long served as a central precept in modern architecture, and it continues to spur imaginative design and the development of innovative manufacturing processes. The relationship between the drawing board and the finished product has never been more dynamic, but the potential of prefabrication has not yet come to full fruition. Home Delivery examines this phenomenon through historical documents, full-scale reassemblies, and films that trace the roots of prefabrication in the work of individual architects like Frank Lloyd Wright, Jean Prouvé, and Richard Rogers and corporations such as Lustron, and in the imaginative systems of other influential figures, including Thomas Edison and R. Buckminster Fuller.

The exhibition also features five full-scale contemporary prefabricated houses, to be constructed in the outdoor space to the west of the main Museum building, continuing MoMA's rich history of presenting full-scale architectural projects. Five individuals and architecture firms have been given the unprecedented opportunity to deploy both commercially viable domestic creations and entirely new, speculative prototypes. The delivery and assembly of these projects functions as a real-time urban event, visible to the general public from the city streets beginning May 22, when the first house arrives for assembly. This Web site is dedicated to the documentation of the design, fabrication, and assembly process of these specially commissioned projects.

Technical Specifications

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Web Site Credits

Curatorial Direction
Barry Bergdoll, Philip Johnson Chief Curator, Department of Architecture and Design
Peter Christensen, Curatorial Assistant, Department of Architecture and Design
Andrea Lipps, Research Assistant, Department of Architecture and Design

Web Site Design and Development
Flat
Tsia Carson, Information Design
Petter Ringbom, Art Direction
Maureen Costello, Project Management
Matthew Kosoy, Developer
Bryan Winters, Developer
Dan Arbello, Graphic Design

Design Management
Allegra Burnette, Creative Director, Digital Media

Project Management
David Hart, Associate Media Producer, Information Technology

Editorial
Jason Persse, Associate Editor, Campaign Communications

The exhibition is the fifth in a series of five exhibitions made possible by The Lily Auchincloss Fund for Contemporary Architecture, and is also generously supported by The Rockefeller Foundation.

Additional funding is provided by the Foundation for the Advancement of Architectural Thought.

Media sponsorship is provided by Metropolitan Home Magazine.

All photos and videos on the Web site are copyright of the architects, unless otherwise noted.

Installation video sequences created with Panasonic Network Cameras.
Cameras and support courtesy of Panasonic USA (www.panasonic.com), with special thanks to
Bill Birnie
Mike Timar
Mark Arevalo
Jan Crittenden
Project produced by Velocity Filmworks.