NEW YORK—When architects approach the design of a home as if it were ready-to-wear, the outcome can transcend questions of fashion. In a sign of the times, celebrated architects like Kengo Kuma have begun designing affordable off-the-shelf homes, in Kuma’s case for international retailer Muji. Muji's designer homes embrace the company’s signature generic chic and are an example of prefabricated architecture that recognizes a building as an assembly of components that can be industrially mass-produced in the hopes of harnessing the efficiency of factory production and the appeal of ready-to-wear.

Muji homes are one of 60 projects that set the tone for MoMA’s ambitious exhibition “Home Delivery: Fabricating the Modern Dwelling,” which runs through October 20 and explores a vast array of architect-designed projects, prototypes, strategies, and techniques for home prefabrication. The stars of the show are five full-scale houses that fill the museum’s vacant west lot. Designed by leading architects, they demonstrate current trends in manufacturing and assembly and, even as architecture moves closer to product design, suggest the pressing concerns of our times.

ARTINFO takes a closer look at each of the five MoMA prefabs, together with one previous house by each of the commissioned architects, in order to show sustained bodies of work.

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