Abstract
This essay analyses Buster Keaton’s masterpieces: One Week (1920); The Haunted House (1921) and The Electric House (1922). His filmic work reveals the montage of mass housing prefabrication in the Modern Age in the United States: repetition and mechanisation of the building production; generic layouts; and modular like–catalogue constructions. Rather than following a sequential building process, these cases are executed as mere accidents or flaws. Buster Keaton’s films however show ironically a non–standardized architecture. This study analyses and compares Keaton’s film production with Catalog Modern House, a prefab dwelling manufactured and shipped by Sears,Roebuck and Co in the 20th century.

Keywords
Modern Movement, Modern architecture, Buster Keaton, Prefabrication in architecture, Prefabricated houses, Modern documentation films, USA modern architecture.

Issue 44
Year 2011
Pages 81-85
DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.52200/44.A.P2HWOVDV