'Dream
Home' for a Family of the Past
Disney Filled Its Futuristic House With
High-Tech Gadgets, But Didn't Imagine an Evolution of Family
Disney's New "Innoventions Dream Home
in Tomorrowland" and "House of Tomorrow," 1957 (Courtesy of
Disney)
By Michael J. Lewis 06/20/2008
Few things look as old as a vision of the future that’s past its
shelf life. When
Now Disney has again envisioned a house of the future, the
“Innoventions Dream Home in Tomorrowland,” which opened earlier this week in
Its most surprising revelations, however, will not be those
planned by its designers. For a model house is not just a work of architecture,
but a diagram of a family. Its arrangement of walls and openings, its
separation of public and private spaces, even features like the placement of a
staircase or picture window, express, in physical terms, the life of a family
–- its habits, structures and desires. For this reason, the truly futuristic
houses are not those that imitate the imagery of science-fiction, but respond
imaginatively to the ever-evolving family.
Some of those evolutions are highly visible, like the increased
numbers of working mothers; some less so, like adoptions by single parents or
same-sex couples. Others are almost invisible -- like the many families that
never sit down to a group meal, save on the occasional holiday. A house that
did not recognize and respond to those developments, however modernistic its
furnishings, could not really be called a house of the future.
For this reason, no rethinking of the American house has been as
radical or audacious as the work of Frank Lloyd Wright, a full century ago.
Wright did not base his progressive houses on new structural systems -- as did
Buckminster Fuller, whose globular Dymaxion House was made possible by
all-aluminum construction. Instead, Wright’s point of departure was the modern
family.
Wright was among the first to notice that family life was
changing. With the freedom offered by the automobile and new household electric
appliances, it was becoming more spontaneous and informal. The stilted
formality of the Victorian house, which depended on a large staff of servants,
had become obsolete. Wright seized on the moment to sweep away the rabbit
warren of parlors, anterooms and sitting rooms into which Victorian life was
shoehorned, breaking down walls to make the household space a relaxed and
flowing continuum. The graceful integration of dining and living spaces became
the hallmark of the modern house -- and remains so to this day.
At the same time, Wright stressed the psychological properties
of the house, and the way it fulfilled primal needs of warmth and shelter. He
exaggerated these elements symbolically -- thrusting his low spreading roofs
deep into space and focusing family life around a central hearth. The result
was a hearty refuge against the world, in which the sense of communal
fellowship was heightened by the breaking down of internal barriers.
A century later, the
American family is again in the process of transformation. The nuclear family
that was the implicit ideal behind the 1957 House of the Future is very
different now. In many cases, the grouping has morphed radically. Changes in
family size and structure, marital status, the phenomenon of late parenthood,
all have ramifications for the nature of family life. The Atlantic recently
coined the term “the organization kid” – drawing on William Whyte’s 1956
"Organization Man" – to describe today’s overextended child, racing
between scheduled playdates and extracurricular activities, and fastidiously
assembling a record to impress a future college admissions board, surely the
first children in human history to boast a resume. Any prospective house of
tomorrow must take these sorts of developments into account and project them
into the future. Has Disney?
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In every respect, the Dream Home of 2008 is stunning. Measuring
5000 square feet, it consists of a combination family room/home office, dining room,
kitchen and two children’s bedrooms, all centered on a lavish “foyer and great
room.” (Oddly, though, there is no master bedroom.) Each room is outfitted with
an array of computer-operated devices that show, as Disney’s press release puts
it, “how a connected digital lifestyle can simplify and enhance many aspects of
daily family life.” The omnipresence of technology is not surprising since the
house is sponsored by three information technology firms -- Microsoft, Hewlett
Packard and Life|ware -- whose products and prototypes constitute its principal
attractions.
Such product placement is not new for Disney. The 1957 House of
the Future showcased the products of its sponsor, Monsanto -- then one of the
world’s largest manufacturers of plastics. Not surprisingly, Monsanto inveigled
as much plastic as possible into the house, not only for its “stylish
furniture” but its floors, walls and ceilings. This excessive reliance on one
material would, unfortunately, backfire. The most memorable line of the 1967 film
"The Graduate" was a bit of fatuous career advice, “Just one word:
plastics,” which seemed to sum up all that was false and corrupt in the world.
Disney took the hint and in the same year razed the House of the Future. Its
greatest triumph came during the demolition process, when the wrecking ball
bounced harmlessly off its plastic wall. In the end, it had to be sawed apart,
strip by strip.
Unlike its predecessor,
today’s Dream Home does not impress with its structure as much as its
technology. Because it is so heavy on gadgetry, Disney has gone to great
lengths to give it a human face. Visitors are to be greeted by cheery actors
playing the fictitious Elias family (slyly invoking Disney’s middle name). An
elaborate scenario has been developed: the Elias's have just learned of their
son’s winning soccer goal; this means a family trip to the international
championship games in China, so they have thrown open their doors for an
impromptu celebration. As the story unfolds, and the Eliases move about their
house, one new household technology after another comes into play.
None of the Dream Home’s innovations, like voice-activated
computers and image-recognition technology, is revolutionary. What is radical
is how each is connected with another to form a dynamic and fully integrated
system. Whenever someone enters a room, sensors note the fact and the room
reacts. The lighting and thermostat automatically adjust, the background music
changes, even the virtual pictures on the wall shift to match personal preference.
(What happens when several people walk in at once is unclear, though one yearns
for something psychedelic.)
At times the virtual technology is spectacular -- down to the
tiny dog flap that notes the arrival of the Elias’s family pooch. Most astonishing,
perhaps, is the teenage daughter's bedroom. There is “a virtual mirror that
projects accessories, hairstyles and the clothes from her closet onto her
reflection, fitting the styles to her body so that she can try out different
‘looks’ as she prepares for her brother's party. . . The virtual skirt even
sways as she twirls around!” If this were not enough, the computer also
proposes accessories in matching colors and styles. Presumably one form of the
“connected digital lifestyle” will be the commercial tie-ins made possible by
the virtual mirror. Though the Disney literature does not dwell on the fact,
one can only speculate that the latest fashions from J. Crew and Banana
Republic – subject to licensing – will soon be swirling around her.
But the Elias family is considerably less futuristic than the
house they inhabit. It creates no mental strain to imagine them sitting quite
happily in 1957 at that plastic dining room table of the original House of the
Future. Rather than envisioning the family of the future, Disney has conjured
up an idyllic and reassuring family of the past.
Nowhere is this more clear than in the architecture itself,
which offers no alarming space pods or plastics. This Dream Home attempts no
such comprehensive rethinking, offers no new architectural vision. On the
contrary, it is a contemporary suburban house by Taylor Morrison, a lucrative
homebuilding company that specializes in neo-vernacular houses, notable for
their bland inoffensiveness.
In the end, the most revealing feature of the house is that it
has, rather distressingly, no bathrooms. Whether that is because the bathroom
remains the one bastion of the house untouched by the digital revolution, or
because this unmistakable hint of physical reality disturbs the unrelenting
theme of virtual reality, is not clear.
What is clear, however, is that the Innoventions Dream Home is
not so much a prototype of a futuristic house, complete in every respect, as it
is an attractive bit of stage scenery. What it presents is a pleasant domestic
backdrop against which the real stars -- the digital wares -- can strut their
high-tech stuff.
Michael J. Lewis, an art history professor at
Williams College, has just received a Guggenheim Fellowship for his coming book
on pietist town planning. His earlier books include "Frank Furness:
Architecture and the Violent Mind," "The Gothic Revival" and
"American Art and Architecture."