Jens Risom’s Legacy Lives On at His Son’s Block Island Prefab

Built to Passive House standards, the New England home of Tom Risom and Pamela Austen is a trove of modernist design.

Most will know Jens Risom, who died in 2016 at the age of 100, as a pillar of midcentury furniture design. But he also made a mark in a lesser-known way. In 1967, the Danish-born designer customized an A-frame he purchased from a Stanmar Leisure Homes catalog, turning it into a family summer home on Block Island. It would later land on the cover of Life, broadcasting to America the potential of prefab.

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