Home Delivery: Modern Prefab Lives Fast, Dies Young, Leaves Good Looking Corpse
by Lloyd Alter, Toronto 
on 09.29.08
The show starts on the sidewalk: Visiting Home Delivery at the at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
More precisely, the show starts on the sixth floor of the new MoMA with an overview of the history of prefab, complete with models, original renderings, photography and most of a Lustron house reconstructed, and which I must admit looked surprisingly drab. There were so many ideas and schemes that just never made it, certainly this part of the exhibit is a shrine what Allison Arieff calls "the curse of the prototype."
Arieff reviewed Home Delivery,and wasn't crazy about the curatorial selections. She asks "Where are the modern prefab houses of Michelle Kaufmann? Resolution 4? Rocio Romero?"
I disagree. You can visit those prefabs, it would be like going to a car show full of 2006 models. Instead, Curators Barry Bergdoll and Peter Christensen bring us the bleeding edge, the stuff nobody has seen in America.
BURST*008 by Douglas Gauthier and Jeremy Edmiston
It doesn't always work; BURST*008 by Douglas Gauthier of Gauthier Architects and Jeremy Edmiston of SYSTEMarchitects did not live up to the promise of its structure (it looked fabulous under construction) and ended up rather drab and unimpressive.
Window in the BURST*008 bedroom. See our earlier post BURST*008: More Prefab at MoMA's Home Delivery Exhibition
Micro Compact Home
The Micro Compact house was the only pre-existing prefab to be included in the show, with its first American viewing. It was also the only unit that one was not allowed inside, so my pictures are awful. It also looks better in pictures than in reality.
See also Home Delivery: The Micro Compact Home Comes To America and other posts on the Micro Compact Home:
Micro - Compact House
After Two Months in the Micro - Compact Home
Microcompact House: Smaller than Paris Hilton's Jail Cell :
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