The two had built a version of the house three years before on the east coast of Australia as a vacation home for a young family. For that house, the architects sorted the pieces on the construction site. But at MoMA, they did not have the requisite layout space. So Gauthier and Edmiston rented a Brooklyn warehouse, where their assembly team organized the plywood ribs and attached the steel clips. Contractors transported these preassembled ribs in three tightly packed piles to Midtown on a flatbed truck, and then unfolded the stacks accordion style before securing the lattice to the house's waiting steel pilotis.

The final step of the assembly process was installation of the SIPs floor and cladding, which serves not only as the building skin, but also as an essential part of the structure. Like the ribs, the cladding was CNC-milled and also precut with grooves that accommodate the ribs precisely. The substructure locks the skin in place and holds it taut like a drum, explain the architects.

Of the five houses, Burst had the longest on-site installation process-about five weeks. Given the amount of hands-on assembly required, Gauthier and Edmiston concede that the term "prefab" may not be an entirely appropriate label. "It might be more accurate to call BURST*008 a kit home, but even that is not entirely accurate," they say. "It is all about controlling smaller pieces."

Packed and ready to ship

In contrast, the team responsible for the house called SYSTEM3 reduced on-site assembly almost to its absolute minimum. Designed by Dornbirn, Austria−based architects Oskar Leo Kaufmann and Albert Rüf, the house is an elegant spruce box 38 feet long, 15 feet wide, and just over 8 feet tall. It arrived at MoMA from the fabrication site in Reuthe, Austria, in two halves, each in its own shipping container. One container transported the completely preassembled "serving" unit, which provides the house's infrastructure, such as mechanical and electrical spaces, the kitchen, and the bathroom. The second container held only planar elements, including the floor, the roof, and walls. These components, flat-packed with the necessary fasteners and assembly tools much like an Ikea bookcase, were put together on-site to form SYSTEM3's "naked" space-the half of the house defined only by the inhabitants' furniture and devoted to activities like sleeping and dining.

 

The SYSTEM3 House (above) was shipped from its production facility in Austria (below) in two containers. Photos © Adolf Bereuter; diagram: courtesy Kaufmann/Ruf

 

 

The exterior walls of the serving and naked units are made of single slabs of 4-inch-thick engineered wood. Although the slabs had been CNC-milled to tolerances within 1 mm, Kaufmann and Rüf had concerns that the elements would not fit together once they arrived at MoMA. They worried that changing temperature and humidity levels during the trans-Atlantic voyage might cause the slabs to warp. And they worried that such deformation would cause collateral damage, such as cracking of the factory-installed windows. However, the containers arrived at the site at 6:30 a.m. on June 23rd with their contents in pristine condition. And by early afternoon, the last element, the SYSTEM3 roof, had been hoisted into place. "It was almost like they practiced in Austria," says Gorman.

 

One transported the completely preassembled "serving" unit, which includes mechanical and electrical spaces, kitchen, and bath. The other container held flat-packed planar elements. The assembly team joined the two types of components on the MoMA lot, completing installation in just a few hours. Photos © Adolf Bereuter