Rather than invent a new manufacturing process, our research focused on existing commercial methods of residential prefabrication. Conversely, although the more commercial attempts achieved higher degrees of success in terms of efficient and integrated manufacturing processes, they were limited in terms of their homes’ design flexibility - seemingly strangled by the process of production. The numerous academic attempts were generally conceived as products with a high level of design, but were burdened with having to invent a complicated manufacturing process. Both the more academic and more commercial paths have ended with varying degrees of success. In addition, several commercial institutions, such as Lustron and Sears Roebuck and Company, have also participated in the pursuit. Le Corbusier, Walter Gropius, Buckminster Fuller, and Frank Lloyd Wright are just a few who have attempted to design a relatively affordable modern home that could be mass-produced. For the past fifty to eighty years, many architects before us have pursued this Holy Grail of modernism. Almost every home uses some level of prefabrication, though the prefabricated components are usually much smaller than the scale of the entire building. Predicating our exploration by decades, off-site production is often referred to as prefabrication or “prefab”. Of course, we weren’t the first architects to consider using mass-production techniques to manufacture single-family homes. Our speculation was that if we, as architects, could design a relatively affordable domestic space, we might be able to not only tap into the country’s emerging and broadening design consciousness - a market that we felt was hungry for well-designed modern homes - but also effect lasting change in the American residential landscape. After all, designer consumer goods are mass-produced and relatively low-cost, but architect-designed domestic spaces are still individually produced and expensive. The fact that 96 percent of domestic spaces in this country have been built without the involvement of an architect is obvious. Although our lives are being modernized through access to technology, consumer products, and high-end appliances, the actual spaces in which we live have been slow to change - in terms of both their design and their execution. Americans are living in the past, with the country’s current stock of single-family houses often representing a nostalgic image of what a “home” should look like, as opposed to being reflective of our domestic evolution. Now a common point of discussion, the oversized and inefficient nature of most American suburban homes is an unfortunate reality. Conversely, residential architecture has been stagnant in its development. Simultaneously, stores such as Design Within Reach, Target, and IKEA were making both high-end and everyday modern design accessible and often much more affordable than it had ever been before. With the introduction of Dwell in 2000, for the first time a magazine was completely devoted to modern domestic space, making modernism more accessible by shining a bright light on the lifestyles of regular people living in such spaces. The Modern Modular is a method of design - a theory really - with its roots reaching beyond the history of just our office.ĭuring the latter half of the nineties, the United States experienced a rise in its collective design consciousness, specifically in terms of accessibility to modern design. The projects represent a series of experiments to test this concept. Our explorations have resulted in a series of freestanding domestic typologies that embody this essence of utility. These modules have been derived predominantly from our urban residential work, which attempts not only to accommodate, but also to articulate and organize the essential elements of utility in contemporary domestic life. It is based on Conceptual Building Blocks we call Modules of Use ( see below). Our concept, the Modern Modular, is a systematic methodology of design that attempts to leverage existing methods of prefabrication to produce custom modern homes, specific to each client and site. Combining this experience of efficient urban domestic-planning strategies with our interest in off-the-shelf products and factory-based construction processes, we have developed a strategy for the mass customization of the single-family home. As a small architectural practice in New York City whose work has consisted largely of urban residential projects, Resolution: 4 Architecture’s focus has historically been the design of highly efficient, cost-effective, idea-driven spaces. Although the single-family home has historically been a focal point in the exploration of architectural ideas, most people do not live in a space designed by an architect.
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