Still Room to Grow? Five Houses Pop Up in Midtown
If you think that Manhattan doesn’t have any more room to grow, think again. Five new houses were just constructed on a busy Midtown block. Of course, these houses aren’t for occupation, they’re part of MoMA’s newest exhibition, Home Delivery: Fabricating the Modern Dwelling. This two-part exhibition, loosely chronologically-
based, examines historical and contemporary prefabricated architecture.
Home Delivery, Part I includes patents and other historical documents that trace development of prefabrication from the early nineteenth century to the current day.
Home Delivery, Part II is the outdoor component located on the west side of the museum where five full-scale prefabricated houses were constructed on a vacant lot. Of the initial 500 architectural firms that applied for the project, only five were chosen to create commercially-viable homes for the exhibit. Each house is unique in its design and all employ some type of “green” technology, such as the use of recycled materials or use of photovoltaic cells, that promotes sustainability.
Next time you drive past a trailer park, think about the evolution of the prefabricated home. What do you think? Would you live in a house a pre-fab house?
Location: MoMA, 11 West 53rd (between Fifth and Sixth Avenues) map (212) 708-9400
Subway: E or V to Fifth Avenue-53rd Street
Hours: 10:30am -5:30pm Mon, Wed, Thurs, Sat, Sun; 10:30am-8pm Friday; Closed Tuesday. Home Delivery: Fabricating the Modern Dwelling is on exhibit through October 20, 2008.
Cost: $20 adults; $16 65+; $12 full-time students; under 16 free (with paying adult); free to all Fri 4-8 pm. Cost includes admission to film programs. Save your MoMA ticket for free admission to P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center in Long Island City, Queens.
Photo credit: Cellophane House flickr, Burst 008 flickr
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