The ideal home that wasn't

2012-05-11T09:25:00-04:00

Before the recession and the return of architectural probity, the phrase "like an alien spaceship" was all over architecture journalism like a cheap suit. Faced with anything that didn't look like a brick box, critics and headline writers would ransack their imaginations before inevitably reaching for the extra-terrestrial.

As the newly restored first edition goes on show, Justin McGuirk explores an emblem of 1960s architectural utopianism, the Futuro house, designed by Finnish architect Matti Suuronen in 1968. If you would like to visit the cabin number 001, it went on show last week at the Weegee Exhibition Centre in Espoo, 20 minutes from Helsinki.

H/T subtopes

A Mobile Utopian House

2011-08-16T13:44:06-04:00

The Futuro was designed by the Finnish architect Matti Suuronen in the 1960s for mass production as a kit of prefabricated parts, which can be assembled, taken apart and reassembled anywhere.

Alice Rawsthorn visits a prototype of Mr. Suuronen’s mobile house which is now on view at the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam in “Futuro: Constructing Utopia,”. She writes that the exhibit "offers both a whistlestop tour of the history of form in design and an opportunity to see some intriguing objects, particularly the older, artisanal pieces. Even so, the star of the show is the Futuro prototype, which is on public display for the first time since being acquired and restored by Museum Boijmans."

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The ideal home that wasn't

A Mobile Utopian House