PRE-FAB HOMECOMING

PAST AND FUTURE DWELLINGS AT MOMA

Innovators from Thomas Edison to Philippe Starck have tried prefabricated houses. Yet no designer or manufacturer has been able to produce an enduring, popular factory-made home. After World War II, the Lustron company introduced a $6,000 saltbox. More outré: Buckminster Fuller's Dymaxion house, based on Siberian grain silos. "It seems to me that pre-fab has always been on everyone's lips,” says Barry Bergdoll, curator of architecture at the Museum of Modem Art, “but that pre-fabrication has always remained expensive except in the mobile-home industry.” Everyone agrees mobile homes are not a universal solution. To move the conversation forward at a time when global population is a major concern, Bergdoll is launching a study of the past, and future, of prefab. "Home Delivery: Fabricating the Modem Dwelling," opening this month, features five fullscale houses, all low-cost and factory-made. The homes are built on the 53rd Street lot just west of the museum. The exhibition, says Bergdoll, is the most thorough examination ever of the historical and contemporary significance of factoryproduced architecture. Inside MoMA, the show includes a survey of 58 pre-fabs from the 19th century to the present, including Thomas Edison’s Single-Pour Concrete House (1906)—not something that took off like the lightbulb. According to Bergdoll, “It was a unique opportunity to build full-scale houses on a lot in Midtown” and was inspired by the 1949 MoMA show “The House in the Museum Garden.” That year a building by Marcel Breuer was constructed in the MoMA sculpture garden. “It was one of the most influential exhibitions that the museum ever did,” Bergdoll says. “People lined up to get in, and I’ve met people who say, ‘I built my house the way I did because I went to the museum in 1949.’” After all, he adds, “people love to see inside other people’s houses,” whether they’re pre-fab or not.

MATT TYRNAUER