Cellophane House

Book excerpt: CELLOPHANE HOUSE(TM) chronicles the design and execution of a five-story, off-site fabricated home assembled on-site in just sixteen days as part of The Museum of Modern Art exhibition, Home Delivery: Fabricating the Modern Dwelling. Through a series of questions, the book explores several of KieranTimberlake's ongoing research agendas including speed of on-site assembly, design for disassembly, a holistic approach to the life cycle of materials, and the development of a lightweight, high-performance, energy gathering building envelope. Cellophane House(TM) takes a holistic approach to factory fabrication, reinventing the way a building is assembled, its materials, and spatial experience. An innovative aluminum frame enables mass-customization of the home in multiple configurations, rapid assembly, and adaptability to different sites and climates. Disassembly, rather than demolition, is inherent as an end-of-life option to successfully preserve the embodied energy in the recyclable house materials. More than a building experiment, it suggests a new way forward in an approach to mass housing. Cellophane House(TM) has received awards from several groups: the AIA Housing Committee, the AIA Technology Committee, Boston Society of Architects, the Chicago Athenaeum Museum of Architecture and Design, AIA Philadelphia and AIA Pennsylvania Chapters.