Author(s): Barry Bergdoll

Architecture

As the world's population swells and the need for sustainable ways of living grows ever more urgent and obvious, prefabricated architecture has taken center stage. Even before our current predicaments, the mass-produced factory-made home had a distinguished history, having served as a vital precept in the development of modern architecture. Today, with the digital revolution reorganizing the relationship between the drafting board and the factory, it continues to spur innovative manufacturing and imaginative design, and its potential has clearly not yet come to fruition. Home Delivery traces the history of prefabrication in architecture, from its early roots in colonial cottages though the work of such figures as Jean Prouve and Buckminster Fuller, and mass-produced variants such as the Lustron house, to a group of full-scale houses from well-known contemporary architects such as Kengo Kuma, Oskar Leo Kaufmann, Richard Horden or Kieran Timberlake.