A Look at Alison Smithson’s 1956 House of the Future

Cory Doctorow, author, journalist, and founder of BoingBoing, often tweets about retro architecture, and he recently tweeted this:

In fact, this is not your usual image of domestic bliss. It is part of a much bigger picture—the House of the Future designed in 1956 by Alison Smithson with her husband Peter Smithson for the Daily Mail Ideal Home Exhibition. The Smithsons are among the most important architects in the U.K. of the period, designing Robin Hood Gardens (a council housing estate in east London) and more. Alison was also author of the seminal “Team Ten Primer.”

The House of the Future

The drawings of it are all in the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montreal. Architectural critic Sabine von Fischer writes in the CCA document, “Unlike other works by the famous architect couple, the House of the Future is not an architectural project, but a scenographic mock-up at full scale of a living unit for a childless couple, set twenty-five years in the future.”

The house gets rid of windows, and is totally inward looking to a courtyard in the middle.

The house is spatially detached from the outside; wired acoustics are the only way it interacts with the outside world. The door elevation shows a speaker and microphone system above a mailbox, all to be installed to the left of the blob-shaped, electronically controlled entry door.

Layout of the House

Here you can see the courtyard, complete with a dining table that sinks into the floor.

The bed also sinks into the floor, and has a single electric sheet instead of blankets.

The line between commodity and fiction is deliberately blurred. Flanked by existing pieces such as the “Tellaloud loud-speaking phone,” manufactured by Winston Electronics Ltd., various modern kitchen equipment, and an Arteluce lamp from 1953, imagined devices such as after-shower body air-driers and telephone message recorders are exhibited in the house.

Calls are not only transmitted by telephone, but broadcast over loudspeakers through the entire house. The model inhabitants explain their gadgets and activities to the audience over microphones. Spatially disconnected from the world, the house reconnects by electroacoustics.

Here are two women getting ready for dinner.

Here is the dining area.

More Than Just a House

Alison Smithson did everything for this design, including designing the clothing that the models wore in the house. Modern Mechanix wrote that, “in the future men, will apparently dress like Smurfs.”

They even designed a typeface which still looks pretty good.

The House of the Future was also published in Mechanix Illustrated, a printed magazine in the United States, which noted: “A short-wave transmitter with push buttons controls all electronic equipment. We’re sure you’ll be interested to know that the shower stall has jets of warm air for drying and the sunken bathtub rinses itself with detergent. No bathtub rings left for Mother.”

There is a lot to learn from this house; the courtyard design maximizes privacy and could use land very efficiently. It was a grand experiment in the use of plastics, new materials, and new ways of communicating. And, as Cory notes, it portrays a scene of domestic bliss (of sorts), even if they were actors.