BURST*008: More Prefab at MoMA's Home Delivery Exhibition

gauthier and edmiston photo

We look at the five prefabs being installed at the MOMA for Home Delivery.

Douglas Gauthier of Gauthier Architects and Jeremy Edmiston of SYSTEMarchitects in New York are building the BURST*008 which they consider to be more of a kit home than a prefab. Like Lawrence Sass's New Orleans home, it is cut out of plywood with a CNC machine, but there the similarity ends. They describe it as " a tension-based structure. The ribs provide the sub-structure but are not complete without the skin to lock them down. The skin—the floors, the walls, and the roof—is made of insulated panels which are pre-cut to accommodate the ribs precisely. Once the ribs are locked in place, everything is held taut, much in the same way that a hide creates tension on a drum. These panels are pre-treated with insulation so that as soon as the skin goes on, the house is fully insulated."

wall section gauthier and edmiston photo

Gauthier and Edmiston are perhaps the least well-known on the prefab scene of all the architects in the exhibition, and their design is probably the most complicated. Will they make it in time? We will let you know on the 20th of July.