Futuro Man and the Candybar Ranch

Back in April of 2003, Barry Jordan, a friend from the DPRG, asked me to come out to his ranch and help him set up a foal cam. The Candybar Ranch is east of Dallas in Poetry, Texas. On the way there, while traveling down Highway 276, I came upon an intact Futuro house. The Futuro House is a round, fiberglass house on stilts that looks something like a flying saucer. It was designed by Finnish architech Matti Suuronen in 1968. Like R. Buckminster Fuller’s Dymaxion Deployment Unit and Wichita House, the Futuro house was designed to be a light, prefab house that could be shipped anywhere in the world and quickly assembled to provide cheap housing. The Futuro house could accomadate up to 8 people, included a bathroom, a kitchen, a table, and beds. Less than 100 of the houses were made. About half of those ended up in the United States. Many still exist if you can find them. They are said to have come in a variety of colors but all of the examples I’ve seen in person have been orange. Perhaps the US manufacturer favored that color. I made note of the location and, a few days later, Susan and I returned to the scene and took a few photographs.

Why am I telling you this now instead of two years ago? It seems I did make a passing comment about it some forgotten blog post. I recently received an email from someone in Finland who is trying to locate and document all surviving Futuro houses. He ran across my blog and asked for more info. His website is a bit scary; loaded with animated GIF files that will slow your browser to crawl and make the site almost unnavigable. Still, it’s a worthwhile goal to build such a list. So I dug up our photos, scanned them, and added a Futuro House gallery to our site. I’ve sent the link off to be added to the list. If I get time in the near future, I may make another trip out to the house to verify that it’s still there and take some better photos. If anyone else knows the location of a Futuro house, drop an email to FuturoMan.