MoMa’s Newest Exhibition to Showcase Contemporary Building Issues

By Anuradha Kher, Online News EditorNew York–For the first time since the mid-century ‘House in the Garden series,’ the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is now showcasing now showcasing model buildings erected on site, which can be occupied, to demonstrate contemporary building issues, in its newest exhibit called ‘Home Delivery: Fabricating the Modern Dwelling.’There are five homes erected on the museum’s vacant west lot in midtown Manhattan. Within the gallery, 84 architectural projects spanning 180 years are presented by means of film, architectural models, original drawings and blueprints, fragments, photographs, patents, games, sales materials and propaganda, toys and partial reconstructions. This collection of material aims to illustrate how the prefabricated house has been, and continues to be, a reflection on the house and a critical agent in the discourse of sustainability, architectural invention, and new material and formal research.The five homes are designed by Philadelphia-based Kieran Timberlake Associates; New York-based Jeremy Edmiston and Douglas Gauthier; Horden Cherry Lee Architects / Haack + Höpfner Architects, based in London and Munich, Germany; the Massachusetts Institute of Technology School of Architecture and Planning / Associate Professor Lawrence Sass (Cambridge); and Oskar Leo Kaufmann of Dornbirn, Austria.Duravit is outfitting one such building, the Cellophane House, with two sink basins from its Vero collection and two Philippe Starck-designed toilets and accessories.The Cellophane House is made of transparent and translucent materials, held in place with an aluminum structural frame. An exception will be the house’s two “bathroom pods” which contain the Duravit fixtures. “The project strips the house down to the bare essentials. Though the bathroom pods are not translucent, the bathroom fixtures allow us to carry through our design sensibility by using clean and modern elements,” says David Riz, associate-in-charge for KieranTimberlake Associates, which designed the Cellophane House.Gaggenau Home Appliances is another company participating in the exhibition by providing appliances to the SYSTEM3 house, designed in 2007 by the architectural firm OLKRüf specifically for the Home Delivery exhibit at MoMA.The SYSTEM3 unit includes Gaggenau’s BO 251 24-in. convection oven, BS 271 24-in. combination steam and convection oven, Vario VP 421 Teppan Yaki cooktop, Vario VI 411 induction wok cooktop and the IK 111 under-counter refrigerator in its compact kitchen.“We chose Gaggenau appliances because its combination of cutting-edge design and professional-grade functionality reflects the inspiration and intention of the SYSTEM3 house perfectly,” says Oskar Leo Kaufmann, architect of SYSTEM3. The SYSTEM3 single-unit house fits into a standard shipping container for ease of transportation by sea or by truck. While only a single unit will be on display at MoMA, the units can be stacked to create a multi-story house. Home Delivery will be on view from July 20 through October 20, 2008.