The Futuro House + Futuro Short Film Review
During the sixties, in the midst of protests across the globe, something strange happened. Groups of UFO's joined local neighborhoods and integrated themselves into every continent aside from Antartica. These new, radically designed houses sparked headlines globally and have curated a strong cult following since their debut in the late sixties. The design is seen as an iconic piece of Finnish and modernist architecture, but the world wasn't as accepting of them when they were on the market.
The Futuro House is a plastic, prefabricated home designed by Finnish architect Matti Suuronen. The house was conceptualized as a one-off for Matti's former classmate, Dr. Jaakko Hiidenkari's, ski chalet in Finland. It was designed to be easy to move to remote locations, like the Finnish mountains, easy to construct at the site, and retain heat well. The Futuro met the criteria for a ski lodge amazingly, but this design appealed to much more than vacationers who need a quick and cheap house. It turns out, a cheap, unique, and easy to assemble house is something that most, average people could use.
But even with the accessibility of the Futuro, the design was just too wild for most people. The first Futuro that was constructed near Lake Puulavesi, Finland had created an outcry! Public protest broke out surrounding the home, people thought the house looked outlandish in the rustic setting. This incident wasn't the only of this nature, Futuros were vandalized, protested, and outright banned in parts of the U.S. The people got their message across. Orders were being cancelled, no matter the non refundable deposit, and eventually the Futuro was forced to stop production after the oil crisis of 1973 and the immediate halt in plastic production. In the end, the Futuro only produced around 100 homes and the number of remaining Futuros has been declining ever since. It's estimated that around half of all Futuros have been demolished and lost.
The Futuro performed poorly, but Matti Suuronen lived long enough to see his design become a global icon of futuristic architecture before passing away in April of 2013. Every few years a Futuro will come up on the market, but a large portion of them continue to sit abandoned. These futuristic design icons are now a thing of the past. As Justin Mcguirk put it, in his 'The Guardian' article on the Futuro, "If something calls itself the future, it's probably not."
Oliver Nelson, written 4/1/25, uploaded 12/1/25.
