Was it the opportunity of an architect’s career? Or a triple-dareepisode of a particularly torturous reality show? Assemble 2,900 piecesof wood and metal into a highly experimental house. On a shoestringbudget. Using untested suppliers. Under constant public scrutiny. Oh —and do it all in just a few weeks.In June 2007, the New York architects Jeremy Edmiston and DouglasGauthier were invited to build a full-scale house they had designed ona parking lot adjacent to the Museum of Modern Art for “Home Delivery:Fabricating the Modern Dwelling,” an exhibition about prefabricatedhousing. {The show opened on Sunday to generally enthusiastic reviews.}Even by the standards of the four other designs that wereselected, Mr. Edmiston and Mr. Gauthier’s project, Burst 008, is noordinary building. It’s a complex plywood structure built oncrisscrossing ribs that can fold into a neat stack or open out like anaccordion. The architects had built a version of Burst in Australia,but they had never tried anything under conditions like the ones theyfaced in Manhattan. “You’re not even allowed to build a woodstructure in New York City,” Mr. Edmiston said he learned at somepoint. “So what do you do about that? Once you cross that bridge,you’re pretty much off-road.”The museum was there to help withthings like permits and a crane, as well as $165,000 in seed money.Beyond that the architects were basically on their own. As Mr. Gauthierrecalled, “We kind of went into it knowing we were in trouble.” Documenting everything on a blog at momahomedelivery.org,they worked out a precise strategy for the spring: four weeks ofoff-site preparation and then six weeks of construction on the museum’sparking lot. They arranged to use a warehouse in the Gowanussection of Brooklyn, then found one 10 times as large next door. Mr.Gauthier’s wife struck up a conversation and handed over a few crispbills, and the Burst team moved in.It was May. Their blog said, “Here at Burst things are going, if not exactly swimmingly, then at least pretty much as expected.”Some things went faster than anticipated. But arranging all theparts into the right piles so they could just be snapped into place at MoMAturned into a logistical nightmare lasting weeks rather than days.While they sorted, the 15 or so architecture students on hand weretrying to reassure the contractors about a model that looked as sturdyas a collapsible fan. As for the architects, they were running back andforth to their offices, scrambling to update the drawings andstruggling to raise money. They fielded a lot of cleversuggestions — sell their story to a home-design television show, or thehouse to a company like Home Depot for a national tour — that were toocomplicated to pull off. And some simpler ideas, like selling productplacement, were vetoed by the museum. So the architectsapproached suppliers for free material. On the blog, the list ofsponsors grew longer and longer. But collecting those names wasn’teasy. “Some of those things didn’t materialize,” said BarryBergdoll, the museum’s chief architecture and design curator. What ismore, he said, it took up time “that they really needed to spend makingsure their suppliers were going to get things here on time.” Whenthe thousands of construction pieces had finally been sorted and theteam was near exhaustion, the cavalry showed up: MoMA’s riggers. Whatwere a few plywood flats to people who have moved Richard Serrasculptures? Four forklift drivers positioned themselves on the fourcorners of the first pallet, then drove in formation to atractor-trailer that pulled out of the warehouse with mere inches tospare. Then they did it again, and again, as if in a choreographedballet that the architects felt privileged to watch from backstage. Wide-loadtrucks are not allowed into Manhattan during normal hours, so they hadto wait until 3 a.m. to cross the river. They cannot bl
www.nytimes.com/2008/07/22/arts/design/22pref.html?_r=1&oref=slogin&pagewanted=all