Press Release

Fluxhouse™/Fluxcity™

Prefabricated/Modular

Building System

February 1 – June 1, 2013

New York, NY. Fluxus Foundation is pleased to present “Fluxhouse™/Flucity™: Prefabricated Modular Building System” in the foundation exhibition space at 454 West 19th St.

Described by the US Secretary of the Treasury to be “the most significant risk to our economy,” the the housing bubble which devastated families in 2006 has now reached its greatest low in 2012. Unless drastic action is taken, Americans will only face greater threats in obtaining affordable housing, job security, and quality of life.

Fluxhouse™ is not simply a prefabricated house. It is a building system designed to provide a solution to achieve social welfare by raising the Quality/Standard of Living in communities across the economic spectrum. Invented in 1965 by Fluxus founder George Maciunas to resolve housing shortages, Fluxhouse™ is a mass-producible design intended for factory production. Using abundantly available materials, such as plastics, non-ferrous metals, and ceramics, Fluxhouse is not only resistant to deterioration and pests, but also to hurricanes, earthquakes, and floods. As many New Yorkers have just experienced in the face of Hurricane Sandy, damage or loss of living spaces can be devastating. The goal of foundation is to realize George Maciunas’ vision to improve living conditions in the United States and around the world by reconsidering how an eco-friendly mass building system can provide the greatest impact with the least cost.

Fluxhouse™, which takes advantage of plastic’s high strength-to-weight ratio, is an innovative modular framework which allows for great flexibility in the size and shapes of building constructions. Utilizing prefabrication as a means to attain cost-efficiency, George Maciunas developed Fluxhouse as a customizable solution to the standardized single home design. Originally built as a single story unit, Fluxhouse can be multiplied and adapted to suit any geographic location using a minimum amount of labor and materials. Intended to provide a sleek, contemporary, ‘zen’ living experience, the Fluxhouse floor plan includes a courtyard garden, multiple live-work spaces, kitchen, bathroom, and five structural cabinets to optimize organization.

George Maciunas was awarded with architectural degrees from Cooper Union (1952) and Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Institute of Technology (1954). After graduating, he worked for several major firms, including Skidmore, Owing and Merrill (1955-57), the highly regarded designers Knoll Associates (1960-61) (interior design, interior graphics, exhibits, displays, structures), and Olin Mathieson (1957-1960) (R&D Aluminum div product development and design) where he is credited with the invention of a structural framework useful in construction of prefabricated buildings using extruded aluminum beams and columns. Furthermore, George Maciunas received a patent for the innovative modular building system in 1961. Maciunas Prefabricated Building System design was completed and copyrighted in 1965 as an invention which can be used to build a single family house, highrise building, or an entire city (Fluxcity™).

In demonstrating an organic process of need-based growth, Maciunas Prefabricated Building System’s evolutionary design principles will be examined in relation to George Maciunas’ theories on knowledge processing in the web exhibit. Topics of commercialism, starchitecture, nomadism, collective intelligence will be explored in the scholarly works of writer Stewart Brand, mathematician Nikos Salingaros, Dr. Michael Haerdter, professor Rosi Braidotti among others.

1965 © All Rights Reserved 2013
George Maciunas Foundation Inc.