Xanadu houses
The Xanadu Houses (English: Xanadu Houses ) were a series of experimental plastic houses in the USA as a showcase for modern living with home automation . Architectural planning began in 1979 and three houses were completed in the early 1980s. One in Kissimmee, Florida; one in Wisconsin Dells ( Wisconsin ) and one in Gatlinburg ( Tennessee ). The new construction and design of the houses attracted many tourists.
In the case of the Xanadu houses, PU (R) insulating foam was used instead of the classic building material, concrete , in order to build them easily, quickly and inexpensively. The buildings were ergonomically designed and contained some of the earliest building automation systems . The Kissimmee Xanadu , designed by the American architect Roy Mason (1938–1996), was the most popular of the three and, at its peak, attracted 1,000 visitors a day. The homes in Wisconsin Dells and Gatlinburg were closed and demolished in the early 1990s due to declining visitor interest. The Kissimmee Xanadu closed in 1996 and was demolished in October 2005.
history
Early development
Bob Masters was an early pioneer in designing homes out of rigid foam insulation. Even before the Xanadu houses were designed, Masters developed inflatable balloons to be used to build such houses.
It was inspired by the Kesinger House of the architect Stan Nord Connolly (1937-2007) in Denver , Colorado , one of the first houses to be built from PU foam. Masters built his first balloon-built house within three days during a snow storm in 1969.
Masters believed that these dome-shaped rigid foam houses could be a meaningful new way of living. So he planned to build a number of model houses. Master's business partner Tom Gussel chose the name "Xanadu" for the concept, a reference to Xanadu , the summer residence of the Yuan dynasty , which was mentioned in Samuel Taylor Coleridge's famous poem Kublai Khan in 1816. The first Xanadu home was built in Wisconsin Dells, Wisconsin. It was designed by the architect Stewart Gordon and work began in April 1979. After three months, the building was completed and open to the public. The construction costs were quite low due to the special construction. For the square meter were reported $ 23 (today's value about $ 80). The floor area was 370 m² and also included a dome-shaped greenhouse . In the same year the house had 100,000 visitors.
effect
The most popular Xanadu House was the second building constructed by Roy Mason. Masters met Mason in 1980 at a future convention in Toronto . Mason previously worked on a similar project, an "experimental school" on a hill in Virginia . Mason and Masters were influenced by other experimental homes and building concepts that focused on ergonomics, practicality and energy efficiency. These included the apartments designed by the architect Kishō Kurokawa and containing removable building modules and other ideas, including a floating habitat made of fiberglass by Jacques Beuf for living on water, concepts for underwater living by the architect Jacques Rougerie and the house of the American architect Don Metz from the 1970s, which used earth as insulation.
And fifty years earlier, in 1933, at the "Homes of Tomorrow Exhibition" on the occasion of the Century of Progress exhibition in Chicago, houses with air conditioning, hot air heating , the latest electrical security (including circuit breakers ) and surveillance cameras were presented.
Mason believed that the Xanadu House would change the way people think about houses, which are just a little more than lifeless, passive shelters against the elements. "Nobody really thought of a house as a comprehensive organic system," said Mason, who was also the editor of the architecture section of The Futurist magazine , a publication of the World Future Society. “A house can have intelligence and every room can have intelligence.” The estimated construction costs for such a house were estimated at 300,000 US dollars. Roy Mason also planned a particularly low-cost version that would cost just $ 80,000, including full home automation, to show that homes using the latest computer technology don't have to be expensive. Such an inexpensive Xanadu House was never built; however, about 1,000 "normal" homes were built this way in the United States.
The Walt Disney Company opened their Epcot Amusement Park in Florida on October 1, 1982 (originally planned as a "real city that would never cease to be a blueprint [idea] of the future."). Masters, Erik V. Wolter, a teacher friend from Aspen High School, and Mason decided to open a Xanadu house a few miles away in Kissimmee. It opened in 1983 after several years of planning and concept development. The Kissimmee Xanadu was over 560 square meters, significantly larger than the average house, since it was planned as a model house . In the 1980s, more than 1000 people visited the new attraction of the place every day. A third Xanadu home was built in Gatlinburg, Tennessee. Several tourism companies advertised the houses as “Home of the Future”.
design
construction
The construction of the Xanadu House in Kissimmee began with the pouring of a concrete floor slab and the erection of a tension ring with a diameter of 12 meters to stabilize the arched roof, which would later become the main room ("Great Room") of the house. A pre-formed vinyl air bag was attached to the tension ring and fully inflated with large fans. Then PU foam was sprayed onto the surface of the balloon, which expanded to 30 times its volume within a very short time and then hardened. By repeating this process several times, a roughly 15 centimeter thick, stable, spherical structure was created within a few hours. Three circumferential pipes were laid in the material, through which cooled water would later flow for a better indoor climate (in the hot summer of Florida). Once the foam was fully cured, the balloon was removed to be used to build the second dome. When this was completed and the airbag removed, the two rooms were connected by a wire mesh. This was also sprayed with foam to create a connecting gallery or corridor.
This process was repeated until the house was completely finished. Windows, roof lights and door openings were simply cut into them and the respective frames were fitted with PU foam. Finally, a two centimeter thick, finer, smoother and fireproof foam layer was applied to the walls, which was also easy to clean. A coating of white elastomer paint was applied to the outside .
Interior
A Xanadu house was designed from an ergonomic point of view with the 'residents of the future' in mind. Curved walls, colored concrete floors instead of carpets, a light color scheme with cool colors and an open floor plan that connects rooms without doors were the parts of this idea. The house had at least two entrances and large round windows. The interior of the house was constructed like a cave; with narrow spaces and low ceilings, although it is not clear whether these reports describe the same Xanadu house with the three meter high dome. The interiors used a creamy pastel color for the walls and a pale green for the floor.
The electronic interior of the Xanadu House in Kissimmee, which is based on the latest building automation, was controlled by computers from the Commodore company . An initial concern was that electricity costs would be too high with multiple computers running around the clock. Mason believed, however, that a central computer could control the energy consumption of all other computers in the house. The building had 15 rooms; Here in particular the kitchen, the party room, the thermal bath and the bedrooms were computerized. The home automation concept of the Xanadu houses was based on ideas that were discussed in the 1950s and before. With the Xanadu houses, the goal of integrating all of these initial ideas into a new and functioning concept was realized. Inside the house there was an electronically controlled visitor guidance system and the living room had screens that displayed novel moving computer graphics. There were security and fire protection systems, as well as a bathroom with an adjustable room climate and a solar-heated steam bath.
In the middle of the building was the Great Room , which, analogous to its name, was also the largest room in the house. He had three artificial trees that supported the roof and also served to heat the room. The Great Room had a bubbling fountain with several basins (room climate), a small television system and a video projector. The entertainment electronics in the living room were described by the builders as an "electronic campfire" ("hearth") due to its social function and central location. Adjacent was the light-flooded dining room with a large window front with a glass table sunk into the floor and around 12 firmly arranged seating.
The kitchen was modern and had a computer terminal, but it was by no means "fully automated". The computer with the name Autochef (about "automatic cook") submitted suggestions for balanced meals, was able to keep a budget book and managed other notes and calendar entries. However, the meals were prepared in a conventional way, including products from the attached greenhouse. There were faucets that came on when a glass was held underneath and a convection microwave oven .
With the well-equipped office of the Xanadu House, the first idea of today's home office came up, even if the most important element of this, the Internet, had not yet been developed. Further computer accesses were in the bedroom, where all functions of the house could be monitored and controlled. So could z. For example, you can avoid getting out of bed yourself to turn off a forgotten kitchen appliance. The children's room contained the latest computers with educational software and large screens that allowed a view of computer-generated or mapped worlds (e.g. Eiffel Tower , beach, etc.). The beds could be retracted into the wall and provided space for learning and playing; There were also study niches, precisely dimensioned, in order to read a book undisturbed or to occupy oneself with a handheld console (computer games).
In the electronically controlled clamping area (orig. "Spa") people could relax in a whirlpool , tan and do sports. There was a "weather room" that could create any climate situation, such as wind and rain, and a room in which clothes could be cleaned with ultraviolet radiation and ultrasound .
Decline
At the beginning of the 1990s, ten years after its construction, the Xanadu Houses increasingly lost public interest. The reason was to be found in the further development of technology and the corresponding obsolescence of the Xanadu houses. The houses in Wisconsin and Tennessee were closed and demolished, while the Xanadu House in Kissimmee could be visited until 1996. Then this too was closed and sold in 1997. It was used as an office and storage room. However, forced mold and mildew owners to deliver it again. But since no buyer could be found and the house was neglected and attracted homeless people, it was demolished in October 2005.
The house was presented as Lost Place in 2007 in a cinematic Urban Exploration documentary . She showed the building as a dilapidated and spotty moss-covered house with open doors and a sleeping homeless man in it.
bedroom
Whirlpool
dining room
Fountain in the living area
kitchen
outlook
See also
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d Roy Mason, L. Jennings, R. Evans: Xanadu: The Computerized Home of Tomorrow and How It Can Be Yours Today! 1983, pages 82-85 and pages 132-135
- ^ Roy Mason, L. Jennings, R. Evans: Xanadu: The Computerized Home of Tomorrow and How It Can Be Yours Today! 1983, pages 124-125
- ^ A b c Roy Mason, L. Jennings, R. Evans: Xanadu: The Computerized Home of Tomorrow and How It Can Be Yours Today! 1983, pages 126-129
- ^ M. Ferris: Tomorrow's Living Today in a 1980s computer magazine called Softalk , August 1983 issue, pages 106-117 online at archive.org
- ^ Roy Mason, L. Jennings, R. Evans: Xanadu: The Computerized Home of Tomorrow and How It Can Be Yours Today! 1983, pages 95-96
- ↑ a b Tom R. Halfhill: Computers in the Home of 1990 Article in the monthly magazine Compute! from December 1982 online as PDF (45 MB) , page 16
- ^ Roy Mason, L. Jennings, R. Evans: Xanadu: The Computerized Home of Tomorrow and How It Can Be Yours Today! 1983, pages 32-36, 196
- ↑ a b c d Annie Tin: Time Passes Xanadu By: What Now? in Orlando Sentinel on June 10, 1994 ( online via proxy )
- ↑ Gennawey, Sam: Walt Disney and the Promise of Progress City . Theme Park Press, 2011, ISBN 1941500269 , p. Xiii.
- ^ A b c Roy Mason, L. Jennings, R. Evans: Xanadu: The Computerized Home of Tomorrow and How It Can Be Yours Today! 1983, panels A – L
- ^ A b Roy Mason, L. Jennings, R. Evans: A Day at Xanadu in Futurist Magazine, February 1984, pp. 17-24
- ↑ Joseph A. Harb: No place like home - beep - zzzt - "smart home" technology reviewed , published in February 1986 in the monthly magazine "Nation's Business" (1912-1999) of the United States Chamber of Commerce , online ( Memento from 23 October 2008 in the Internet Archive )
- ^ A b c Catherine O'Neill: Computers: Those Amazing Machines . National Geographic Society , 1985, ISBN 978-0-87044-574-3 , pp. 92-93 .
- ^ Nick Heap: Information Technology and Society: A Reader , SAGE Publications 1995 in the Google book search
- ↑ Information on Urban Explorers: Into the Darkness on the Internet Movie Database
literature
- Joseph J. Corn: Yesterday's Tomorrows: Past Visions of the American Future in The Johns Hopkins University Press, May 15, 1996, ISBN 978-0-8018-5399-9
- Catherine O'Neill: Computers: Those Amazing Machines in National Geographic Society, June 1985, ISBN 978-0-87044-574-3