What look like flying saucers are actually prefabricated homes designed by Finnish architect Matti Suuronen. Learn more about the Finnish UFO houses.
About 100 Futuro houses were built during the late 1960s and 1970s with early use of fiberglass technology and are today sought after by collectors. We first came across the Futuro House around December 2011 with a Futuro House located at the coast at Bamble in Norway.
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Related: Modular Construction: Scandinavia’s Answer to Urban Housing Challenges
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Originally in 1865, Matti Suuronen was asked to design an easy-to-heat ski hut that could be placed in rough terrain. The architect, who had previously worked with polyester, decided to use the most affordable and lightweight hard plastic material. Finnish plastics manufacturer Polykem helped him build the prototype.
The western world had a utopian vision of a bright future for plastics. In the 1960s, the promise of infinite potential to shape products into forms that were once inconceivable. Plastics were seen as a solution to the post-war shortage of building materials and as a medium for audacious design, like prefabricated homes that could be manufactured off-site and subsequently transported, assembled and installed on-site.
The first house was displayed at an exhibition in London in October 1968 and received tremendous attention. Licensing rights were sold for the Futuro to be mass produced in 30 countries around the world. It stood approximately 13 feet high and 26 across, with one large room and a tiny bathroom, and sold for around $12,000 to $14,000 (about $84,000 to $105,000, adjusted for inflation).
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Related: Sweden – Leading the World in Prefab Houses
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The house was built in modules, making it easy to disassemble and reassemble, and its low weight also made it possible to transport it in its entirety on a flat-bed truck or flown in and lowered into position by helicopter.
A 1970 Tampa Tribune article describes a “furnished model with shag rug, wall hugging curved sofa, hooded fireplace and dimmer controlled indirect lighting.” Suuronen’s design had its roots in “pure mathematics” (something to do with pi), not a utopian ideal, according to the writer Marko Home, who has co-produced a book and a documentary about the house. Still, the Futuro “perfectly captured the ideas of space-age architecture and design.”
“We find it very easy and convenient to live in a Futuro house,” the Norwegian residents told D2 magazine. “The only thing we take extra care of is the steel foundation on which the house stands. That’s probably what will break the structure sometime in the future.”
Sadly, the aspirations of ‘plastic houses’ and the associated licensing model were victims of the chaotic and inflationary oil crisis in the mid-1970s. The houses that survive today are tracked by an enthusiastic mob of Futuro House spotters and coveted by collectors who see their historical importance, or who simply just like them.
According to the impressively thorough website The Futuro House, just 96 were built and 67 remain standing. It has become the kind of cult object that inspires Flickr Pro subscribers to take cross-country road trips. Futuros can be found on every continent except Antarctica (where there are two Futuro-looking houses called Googie Huts; they’re technically their own thing), and there’s one in Tampa Bay serving as a strip club’s VIP room. But outside of Finland and architecture forums, the design is largely unknown.
The Finnish UFO Houses, written by Tor Kjolberg