It’s not hard to put a date on the Futuro house. It looks like a flying saucer and it’s made of plastic: it could only come from the 1960s. When the Futuro was launched in 1968, plastics had been around for 60 years: Leo Baekeland invented the first all-synthetic plastic – Bakelite – in 1907, kicking off an industry that transformed 20th-century living. By the 1950s, plastics were popping up all over the home. People wore polyester suits and crimplene frocks, ate from melamine crocks on Formicatopped tables, then stored their leftovers in Tupperware containers. Buckets and bowls were polythene, records were vinyl and the lounge suite was covered in Dralon. It couldn’t be long before someone went all the way and made a house entirely from plastic.
MEN loved its wacky space-age lines. Women wanted more cupboards. Failure was inevitable. For a while, though, the Futuro seemed to herald a new way of living in a new type of house. Forget bricks, mortar and wood – this was the age of plastic. No longer something used to fake more expensive woods and marbles, plastic was fantastic just as it was. Designers loved the feel, the colours and the chance to shape things exactly as they liked. Plastic furniture was no longer cheap and tacky, it was chic and pricey. The age of plastic was about to take off, and plastic houses were part of a brighter, better future.
Architects had been toying with the idea of plastic houses well before Finnish architect Matti Suuronen designed the Futuro in 1965. They envisaged a future in which families would live in portable, inexpensive and easy-to-clean homes that they could take with them if they moved. Plastic had so many advantages: it was light and durable; it wouldn’t rot and would never be attacked by woodworm or termites. A quick hosing-down every now and again would keep it looking like new.
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One of the first attempts to build an all-plastic house in the 1950s failed spectacularly. After a short time in the sun, the epoxy holding its panels together deteriorated and the house fell apart. However, the plastic home gained credibility with the unveiling of the Monsanto House of the Future at Disneyland in California in 1957. Engineers at the Monsanto Chemical Company had asked architects at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to design them a plastic house. The result was a startling contrast to Snow White’s castle: with its four wings atop a pedestal, the House of the Future was the last word in modern design. Made from 15 tonnes of glass-reinforced plastic, it was equipped with every labour-saving gadget its designers assumed we’d all be using by 1987. Once people saw it they were bound to want one.
Visitors to Disneyland did love the house, but they didn’t want to live in it. The Monsanto house never went into production, but it did prove remarkably durable. When a demolition crew came to remove it in 1967, the house proved surprisingly resistant. The gang’s wrecking ball bounced off it and they had to resort to chewing it to pieces with hacksaws and choker cables.
As the House of the Future was being consigned to history, Suuronen was ready to reveal his own ideal home. Suuronen wasn’t looking to solve a housing crisis or develop a cheap mobile home: he was doing a friend a favour. The friend had asked if he would design a ski cabin that could be easily built on a mountainside and was easy to keep warm.
Suuronen’s cabin was an ellipsoid shell made from a sandwich of fibreglass-reinforced polyester plastic, insulated with a filling of polyurethane foam. The unusual shape gave the lightweight shell increased strength, as it does a bird’s egg. Continuing his theme, Suuronen added egg-shaped windows and a retractable aeroplane-style door with steps that could be raised and lowered: the result was a house that looked like everyone’s idea of a flying saucer.
Polykem, a Finnish company whose usual lines were plastic roof domes and neon signs, won the contract to make the house. Unveiled in March 1968, the cabin was 8 metres across, 4 metres high and had a floor area of 25 square metres. It weighed 2.5 tonnes, came in 16 pieces that could be bolted together on site and was ready to move into in two days. The interior was pure 1960s Scandinavian – open plan, chairs that pulled out into beds, a kitchenette and bathroom, all equipped with plastic fittings.
“The Futuro came in 16 pieces and was ready to move into in two days”
Later that year, Polykem exhibited some of its products in London, hoping to win orders for its neon signs. Instead, it received hundreds of inquiries about the Futuro. Perhaps the plastic house’s time had come? Polykem decided to go into full-scale production and to license companies to manufacture it abroad.
The Futuro house was intended as a holiday home. In the US, however, Philadelphia businessman Leonard Fruchter reckoned the Futuro might appeal to Americans in a way the Monsanto house never had. He set up the Futuro Corporation, with plans to open factories across the US and turn out tens of thousands of Futuros. First, some changes had to be made. The Finnish Futuro was too poky for Americans used to bigger spaces. Lifting the floor 20 centimetres increased the floor space by an impressive 60 per cent. Americans also preferred more privacy, so the open-plan living area was sacrificed to provide a lounge-diner and two bedrooms with doors.
The American Futuro was launched the week before the first moon landings, in July 1969. Space travel was the future and the Futuro looked the part. The media loved it. Men loved it. The American housewife wasn’t so sure. Maybe it was just a bit too way-out. And there was nowhere to hang those crimplene frocks.
Sales were slow. Only around 60 Futuros were ever manufactured – not all of them as homes. Some became cafes, the Swedish air force used three as lookout towers, and at least two became banks. A second, less bizarre design – the Venturo – did slightly better, but the days of the plastic house were numbered.
Most people blame the failure of plastic homes on the oil crisis of 1973, when people queued for petrol and the price of plastic tripled. But that wasn’t the whole story, says Wayne Donaldson, former engineer, architect and now state historic preservation officer for California. “The oil crisis was a problem but the Futuro house was always expensive for its time.” Nor did plastic turn out to be as trouble-free as touted. “The idea that if it’s plastic it will last forever and all you have to do is wash it was a misconception,” says Donaldson. The plastics of the 1960s and early 1970s were poor compared with today’s. Exposed to ultraviolet light, spider cracks soon appeared in the outer coat. “Movement could cause worse cracks, and once water got into them the plastic could sag and deform.”
The biggest obstacle of all, however, was people. There was a shift away from traditional housing and people had become much more mobile, says Donaldson. “But that didn’t mean they wanted to take their homes with them everywhere they went. People weren’t really ready for this type of lifestyle.”
Today there are people who are more than happy to live in plastic houses and Donaldson is one of them. His weekend retreat in the San Jacinto mountains is a Futuro he spent years restoring. Like any house, it has its pros and cons, he says. In winter, it heats up in just 15 minutes but in summer it can overheat. The interior walls of glass-reinforced plastic are rather ugly to modern eyes. “Because of the way it’s sprayed onto the interior panels the finish is wrinkly and lumpy.” Its egg-shape gives the Futuro the strength to withstand mountain winds, though a gale can make the house oscillate, says Donaldson. “That can be kind of nice though and rock you to sleep.”
In the 1960s and 70s, people weren’t ready to embrace the joy of plastic. So is now a better time? Today, plastics tend to be shunned on environmental grounds. “People in the green community gag at the idea of plastics,” says Donaldson. Nevertheless, he believes it’s possible to make a sustainable house from plastics. “New plastics are far better and last much longer. Plastic houses are very energy efficient, easy to transport and don’t use much energy in their construction. You could fit solar cells on the roof and need not be attached to the energy grid. And making plastic from oil is much better than burning it as petrol.”
