The idea of a well-oiled assembly line churning out gleaming and affordable new houses, flooded with light and as compact as a ship’s cabin, is a well-worn Modernist fable.For the average middle-class American, however, prefabricated housing has always lacked sex appeal. The masses tended to prefer a traditional style, no matter how shabbily designed, and never really bought into it. Nor did most of the industrialist tycoons with the money to make the dream real.So “Home Delivery: Fabricating the Modern Dwelling,” which opens on Sunday at the Museum of Modern Art, is a delightful surprise. Organized by Barry Bergdoll, MoMA’s chief curator of architecture and design, it presents more than 80 projects, from humble experiments in suburban living to stunning works of creative imagination. In a tour de force Mr. Bergdoll was able to build five full-scale model houses for the show in a lot just west of the museum. The effect is startling: expressions of a suburban utopian world surrounded by Midtown’s looming skyscrapers.But like all great exhibitions “Home Delivery” is not simply a crowd pleaser. It’s the kind of loving, scholarly achievement that is rare in today’s architectural climate, which so often favors cheap spectacle over probing intellect. Mr. Bergdoll has not only managed to track down some unexpected gems, he has also arranged them in a way that allows us to see them with fresh eyes. He makes a convincing case that prefabricated housing was both a central theme of Modernist history and a dream that remains very much alive today.To experience the show at full throttle, resist the temptation to go straight to the model houses and start with the main exhibition in the museum’s sixth-floor galleries. It opens with a vision from the mass-produced utopia of tomorrow: two gorgeous wall fragments — one by Ali Rahim and Hina Jamelle, the other by Jesse Reiser and Nanako Umemoto — that push the limits of customized computer technologies. Their voluptuous surfaces suggest a hybrid of industrial materials and free-form organic design.Just above to the right is a projection of a 1920 Buster Keaton film in which fumbling young newlyweds try to assemble a prefabricated house. Dropped off the back of a truck, the house’s various parts were mislabeled by the woman’s jilted former suitor. The result, once it is assembled, is a chaotic jumble of tilting walls, irregular windows and doors that open to nowhere.The film pokes fun at those who spend their lives chasing fantasies. But it also hints at the instability at the core of any creative venture, teasing out one of the exhibition’s most haunting themes: the conflict inherent in the so-called American dream. In many ways the prefab house embodies the tension between a desire for stability and a quixotic faith in social mobility.The history of prefabricated dwellings is one of false starts and foiled dreams. In 1833 a London carpenter identified as H. Manning created one of the first, the Manning Portable Cottage, for his son, who was sailing off to make his fortune in Australia. Made of precut wood posts and panels, the house could be conveniently packed in a ship’s hold and reassembled. A single man could carry most of its lightweight components, making it ideal for the untamed Australian wilderness. {The house, which Manning produced in a range of styles, became a mild commercial success.}More inventive still was the 1931 Copper House, designed by the Modernist master Walter Gropius. It was conceived as a system of insulated copper wall panels that could be easily transported and assembled on site in 24 hours. Despite the house’s relatively conventional layout and form, a solid box with punched-out windows and a pitched roof, the glistening copper exterior gave it a haunting appearance. The house enjoyed moderate success in Germany. After the Nazis rose to power in 1933, it was marketed to Jews fleeing the
www.nytimes.com/2008/07/18/arts/design/18dwel.html