Retrofuture.com

Another 1999 Retrofuture original…the concept of pre-fab housing is making a comeback.

How strong was the Monsanto House of the Future? Let’s just put it this way—when it came time to be demolished, a wrecking ball bounced off its plastic exterior.

The popular and durable Disneyland exhibit—which resided at the foot of Tomorrowland from 1957 and 1968—was there to “demonstrate the architectural potentialities of plastic.”

That it did with flying colors. The Monsanto House was resilient—in fact, it was nearly indestructible. “Wrecking ball, blowtorches, chain saws, and jackhammers all failed” to bring it down, reports Professor Jeffrey L. Meikle in American Plastic: A Cultural History. In a last ditch effort, he writes, the demolition crew attached cables to the building’s plastic exterior and proceeded to shred it into pieces.

The final stand of the Monsanto House was further proof, if any more was needed, that plastic had “potentialities.” It was the stuff of miracles: flexible, affordable, lightweight, energy-efficient, and astoundingly durable.

So why didn’t the plastic house phenomenon catch on? Primarily because the construction industry viewed plastic homes as a threat to their very existence.

Prefabricated homes like Eliot Noyes’ 1964 “Wonder House” (see above) offered advantages that traditional homes could not match. Plastic, with its malleable qualities, could be industrially produced, mass-marketed, and sold cheap. For some, plastic homes seemed like the logical solution to a housing shortage.

But, by the eco-conscious 1970s, the public image of plastic began to plummet. “Like a sci-monster in a cheap horror flick,” writes Stephen Fenichell in Plastic: The Making of Synthetic Century, “plastic had metamorphosed in the contemporary environmental drama as the great Eco-Satan.”

The allure of prefabricated plastic homes began to fade until the early 1980s, when the idea was briefly revived by Bob Masters and Roy Mason and their Xanadu foam houses (pictured left).

Xanadu homes were fabricated by spraying a thick layer of polyurethane foam onto preexisting balloon-like forms. The result was both fanciful and futuristic looking.

Life compared Xanadu to “an Olympian soufflé or a giant mushroom with portholes.” The public was invited to tour the homes, which were stuffed with the latest electronic gadgetry.

Unfortunately, for the wizards of Xanadu, their colorful creations ended up being a kitschy roadside attraction, not a radical new way to construct housing.

Of the three Xanadu homes constructed, only the prototype in Kissimmee, Florida survives, and barely at that. The last reported plan was to turn the quirky shrine into a daycare center.

To date, the only successful mass-produced plastic buildings have been the “Radomes” created by Buckminster Fuller (of geodesic dome fame). Thousands of these fiberglass-reinforced polyester structures were built along the Arctic circle as early warning stations in case of a nuclear attack in the 1950s.

Fuller’s Radome (pictured left), like the Monsanto house before it, proved to be an incredibly durable structure, even in the harsh Arctic climate. According to author Stephen Fenichell, none of the Radomes ever collapsed or had to be replaced.

“These were…pup tents with the structural specs of the Pyramids,” writes Fenichell. “Plastic—in the form of polyester film—had conquered the elements.”