Take Me to Your Futuro

Is there anyone among us who wouldn't want to live in a flying saucer? Well, I guess perhaps a few, and maybe that's why the Futuro prefabricated house never "took off."

If we can get past the pun...there was an article semi-buried in the Philadelphia Inquirer's Real Estate section last Sunday. If I were a proper journalist, I'd at least have the article with me to refer to, but instead you are stuck with my somewhat undependable memory. I believe it originally appeared in the New York Times.

ANYWAY, in the late 1960s a number of flying saucer shaped homes were manufactured and shipped across the globe. Less than 100 have survived, and one owner is trying to document all remaining Futuros on his website:

http://www.futuro-house.net/

They truly look just like the stereotypical B-movie flying saucer -- down to the door with steps that lowers (airplane style). Well, I suppose your true flying saucer isn't perched on inverted tripod legs, but let's not quibble over details.

Locally (to me in South Jersey) there is one in Willingboro, NJ that for a time was used as a bank. I'm generally open-minded, but I wouldn't be depositing my paycheck in any novelty-shaped building. (Well, maybe a giant piggy bank, but only if it was a really sweet pig.)

But that's just me. That Futuro is currently housing nothing more than a bunch of feral kitties, so I suppose the general public is just as close-minded as I am about their banking choices (Commerce, Commerce or Commerce.)

My other favorite location (gleaned from the above website) was a photo of a Futuro perched on top of a strip club. That made a little more sense to my twisted mind -- if you factor in the probing often recounted in tales of alien abduction.

Enough!

I'd love to have one in my backyard, although I'm afraid the SUV crowd wouldn't quite understand.

Here are a few more links. All have cool photos and/or provide more accurate information than my somewhat shoddy re-telling permits.

70s – The Futuro house http://home.wanadoo.nl/imagineer/mags/mag10.htm

POP – Matti Suuronen http://www.kiasma.fi/site/pop/pop.php?tid=57&lang=en&haku=&mo=&mo=

The Mystery Ship of Morey's Pier http://www.funchase.com/Images/LostandFound/Mystery%20Ship.htm