Cliff May: Cliff May Homes Factory Model home (Los Angeles, Calif.)

The idea for Cliff May Homes, a business of selling designs for prefabricated tract houses, was born in 1950 out of discussions between Cliff May and Chris Choate, an architect working in May’s office. May and Choate did field research, visiting other low-cost housing developments throughout California and in Arizona to assess their competition.
They named the first prototype of the panel system the “Factory Model” and built it on a plot of land May owned in Sullivan Canyon, above Riviera Ranch. By the end of the day, a group of about ten skilled laborers had assembled the shell of a two-bedroom house using both post-and-beam construction and a system of pre-assembled panels

Cliff May, architect
Chris Choate, architect

Cliff May papers, Architecture and Design Collection. Art, Design & Architecture Museum; University of California, Santa Barbara.

1951

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