Lazor Office
FlatPak House
In contrast to the up!house, the FlatPak House hews closely to the rectangular, low-slung style associated with prefab. Minneapolis architect Charlie Lazor, frustrated by his inability to find an affordable modern home, created FlatPak as a flexible kit of parts—the main components are concrete panels, wood-framed panels, and glass—that can be ordered and customized online. After designing the house in 2004, Lazor built his own and moved his family in.
konyk
up!house
Prefabricated housing has always seemed to be on the verge of taking off —but never quite does. “It’s something that keeps coming up through 20th century architecture, movements toward prefab housing,” says Hodge.
Of the current surge in interest, Hodge remarks, “It’ll be interesting to see if it stays or dies out.” Two designs in the Triennial demonstrate not just the continued allure but the potential scope of prefab.
Craig Konyk’s up!house is still a prototype, but as its name suggests, it reimagines the low, boxy shape of most prefab houses with a nod to automotive design, proposing a steel “chassis” with coated-metal panels in different color finishes. The Brooklyn architect would like to make buying a modern house as easy as buying a car.
Panelite
Composite panels
With its range of translucent panels—honeycomb cores of aluminum, polymers, and polycarbonate that are faced with resin, fiberglass, or glass—the company Panelite extends architectural possibilities. Founded in 1998 by two architects, Emmanuelle Bourlier and Christian Mitman, Panelite has had some recent breakthroughs. The company learned to curve its cast-polymer panels, making possible the Workstation, a sleek desk developed for OMA’s campus center at the Illinois Institute of Technology.
It has also created an interlocking fabrication system called ITL. ITL takes advantage of the panels’ inherent strength to frame interior walls and free-standing elements without the need for extra support.
SHoP
Camera Obscura
SHoP’s Camera Obscura (Latin for “dark room”), part of the redeveloped waterfront in Greenport, N.Y., uses ancient technology—an optical lens and a mirror—to project live images of nearby Long Island Sound. The creation of the building itself was far more progressive.
SHoP, a New York firm known for its commitment to research and development, used 3-D modeling software to design the 350-square-foot building and had its main metal components cut by laser off-site.
The structure’s undulating wooden wrapper was milled in Brooklyn in a single morning, then fitted over the concrete foundation. “[The architects] don’t have to go through a middleman or contractor to produce drawings, which are then used for fabrication,” explains McQuaid. “They can produce everything in-house, so there’s no interpretation necessary.” By working closely with engineers and fabricators (who use the same software), SHoP has been able to streamline the design/build process for greater control over details and improved cost-efficiency.
Clear Blue Hawaii
Napali kayak
Designed in 2003 by biochemist Murray Broom for the Honolulu adventure-sports retailer Clear Blue Hawaii, the Napali is the world’s first transparent, foldable kayak. Its gently tapering form has already won it a place in the permanent collection at the Museum of Modern Art. But the Napali‘s real triumph is how well it functions. The clear shell allows the kayaker unparalleled intimacy with the marine world below, yet it is surprisingly tough, made of a military-grade urethane stretched over a Kevlar frame.
Weighing only 26 pounds, the kayak is lighter than most fiberglass models, and the collapsible frame makes it easily portable. It can even fit into a backpack.
Greg Lynn FORM
Alessi flatware
Greg Lynn, an architect based in Venice, Calif., is known for the complex, amorphous forms (or blobs, he proudly calls them) of his digitally derived architecture, but he takes an equally experimental approach to smaller-scale product designs. For the Italian company Alessi, Lynn created a coffee and tea service shaped like an alien flower (2003); a set of bulging, bone-china “Supple Cups” (2005); and last year, a line of flatware (still in the prototype stage). The sinuous shapes of the utensils recall the floral motifs of Art Nouveau, and the delicate veins threading through them add an organic—and oddly carnal—touch.
Herman Miller
New Office Landscape
Herman Miller’s New Office Landscape borrows from New Urbanism, imagining an office where shared spaces overlap with individual work stations—much as New Urbanist communities have public plazas, stores, and restaurants close to single-family homes. In the New Office Landscape, organic clusters of different-sized spaces—including The Basket, a group seating area with a woven, permeable screen that offers privacy without isolation—supplant the rigid grid of cubicle-land. This emphasis on sociability is a response to how offices function today, now that people can do much of their work remotely. Soon, “people will go to the office not to be alone, but to collaborate, have meetings, and be creative in the environment of other people,” says Lupton.
