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Overview

The Monsanto Chemical Company sought to capitalize on the postwar residential building boom by commissioning MIT faculty to design a new house composed of a very high percentage of plastic components for "enclosure, support, aesthetics and economy." (See Alan Hess, "Monsanto House of the Future," Fine Homebuilding, no. 34, 08-09/1986, p. 71.) It hired three men, Albert G.H. Dietz, an engineer and two architects, Marvin Goody and Robert W. Hamilton in 1954, to produce this house that conceptually anticipated life 32 years in the future. The house was designed with L-shaped roof and floor bents of fiberglas-reinforced polyester to comprise a unified exterior/interior space shell. The house's L-shaped parts, fused together, formed the House of Tomorrow's distinctive C-shaped section profile. Four, 8-by-16-foot, lobes were cantilevered from a 16-foot-square, utility core laid on a concrete foundation, forming a cruciform plan. Hanging the living and sleeping spaces from a central core minimized costly foundation work and would, theoretically, speed up construction times. The lobes were bolted to steel plates on the core's laminated wood perimeter beams. The floor bents of the C-shaped wall had hollow spaces, enabling heating and cooling ducts to distribute forced air from a furnace in the utility core. The fiberglas bents were covered in urethane foam. A honeycomb of kraftpaper sealed in plastic resin and sandwiched between fiberglas sheathings on top and bottom formed the house's floors and ceilings. They were epoxied to the rounded, C-shaped exterior shell to form flat, interior living spaces.

Goody and Hamilton designed the House of Tomorrow to take on other shapes, as well, including a rectangular plan with lobes balanced on either side of a utility core, or an H-shape by adding another utility core and more lobes. As Jeffrey Meikle has observed: "Despite the relative permanence of fiberglas, the plastic house envisioned at MIT would respond to changing needs. Identical modular rooms could be rearranged on site. A family could add rooms as needed and remove them when children left home. In its earliest, most solid incarnation, as the Monsanto House of the Future, plastic architecture thus promised flexibility and impermanence." (See Jeffrey L. Meikle, American Plastic: A Cultural History, [New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1995], p. 208.) While such flexibility seemed like a good idea, actually taking apart the House of the Future proved difficult and time-consuming.

Building History

The Monsanto Chemical Company funded two tourist attractions/advertising pavilions in the Tomorrowland portion of Disneyland, the "House of the Future" and the "Hall of Chemistry." (The latter was an original Tomorrowland attraction from 1955, which, like the model house, closed in 1966.) Commissioned by WED Enterprises in 1954, Monsanto's demonstration residence opened at Disneyland in 06/12/1957 following six months of construction, designed as a collaborative effort between Monsanto engineers and faculty from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Enginering professor Albert G.H. Dietz (1907-1998), of the Plastics Research Laboratory in MIT's Department of Building Engineering and Construction, led the effort in Cambridge, MA, and worked with Department of Architecture faculty, Associate Architecture Professor Richard W. Hamilton and Assistant Professor Marvin E. Goody (1929-1980) on the specifics of the design. (Members of twelve diverse professional engineering societies also consulted on the project.) The structure and furnishings were composed of various plastic materials and were said to anticipate life in the year 1986.

MIT received Albert Dietz's papers c. 2000. An article published by MIT soon after the papers' accession noted of the Monsanto House of the Future: "Two volumes from 1957 describe the architectural evolution, engineering analysis and structural design of the Monsanto House of the Future, which used plastics in many innovative ways. Step-by-step design, construction and assembly of the plastics pavilion of the American exhibition in Moscow in 1959 are detailed in three well-illustrated volumes by Dietz and Frank Heger (S.B. 1948, S.M. 1949, Sc.D. 1962), one of the three MIT founders of Simpson Gumpertz Heger, a prominent engineering consulting firm based in Arlington. The rounded mushroom-like plastic parts lined up before construction in Moscow look like a flying saucer invasion." (See Deborah Levey, "Teaching notes offer glimpse of decades-old building methods."Accessed 08/28/2012.)

As noted by the magazine Progressive Architecture in its 07/1957 issue: "Today [June 12], at Disneyland Park, the 'House of the Future'--a direct result of Monsanto's program to establish plastics as engineering materials of construction--was opened to the public. The structural form was evolved from the following concept: Because of plastics' versatility, the shapes of correctly designed structures can be a function of their use rather than of the form of the materials from which they are constructed. Basic unit is the curved, hollow plastics section, 8' x 16', that forms ceiling, wall and floor. Sixteen of these modules are cantilvered from a 16-ft square utility core to form four wings. Specially designed plastic flooring has foam back with controlled resiliency and noise-reducing properties. MIT and 12 co-operating companies participated." (See "Monsanto Reveals Present and Future of Plastics in Architecture," Progressive Architecture, vol. 38, no. 7, 07/1957, p. 89.)

Monsanto's House of the Future stayed open for over 10 years. Twenty million visitors strolled through the building, making it one of the most scrutinized model houses in American history.

Building Notes

Shaped like a four-leafed clover of cheese, the House of the Future was composed of various plastic compounds, most notably on the exterior, fiberglas reinforced polyester. Fiberglas, a product patented by the Owens-Corning Fiberglas Corporation in the late 1930s, found wide uses during World War II, and continued to fascinate leading American designers in the late 1940s and 1950s, who sought to adapt it for a spectrum of new consumer items, from chairs to suitcases. Charles (1907-1978) and Ray Eames (1912–1988), Eero Saarinen (1910-1961), George Nelson (1908–1986), Gideon A. Kramer (1917-2012) and Lawrence Peabody (1924-2002) all designed notable Modern chairs of fiberglas. The web site for DOCOMOMO US evaluated the innovative structural elements of the House of the Future: "[Collaborators Dietz, Hamilton and Goody] developed a frame based on four identical U-shaped wings, each broken into two pair of curvilinear 'L's (the longer arms of which compose the ceiling and floor). This modularity would allow for facility of production and distribution on a large scale, which was ultimately, Monsanto's impetus for the project. The structural use of fiberglass was innovative, and its performance was unknown, so Dietz subjected a prototype to extensive testing at the MIT Plastics Research Laboratory before it was installed at Disneyland. Of primary concern was expansion/contraction at differently exposed areas of the structure causing sudden material failure. Ultimately, ten layers of fiberglass mat (3/10") composed each unit, and the roof elements were tied together with steel tension rods. A layer of urethane foam and honeycomb kraft paper shaped the interior surfaces. The result left the two nonstructural 'walls' of each wing free for glass or opaque siding. Interior partitions separated the space into its various rooms. Most notably, those rooms requiring plumbing (kitchen, bathrooms) were over the center core." (See DOCOMOMO US "Monsanto House of the Future,"Accessed 08/28/2012.) Like many industrial concerns after World War II, Monsanto researched the concept of mass-producible housing. Unlike the General Panel Corporation which investigated assembly-line production of modular wood panels, or Lustron Homes, which examined the use of enameled steel, Monsanto focused on the use of plastics; for varying reasons, including the preferences of consumers, lending institutions and labor unions, all experiments of the 1950s failed the test of profitability.

The kitchen and bathroom occupied the center of the House of the Future's plan, above the utility core, requiring the shortest and least-expensive pipe runs. On one axis, two bedrooms were placed, acoustically separated by the kitchen/bath from the living room. On the other axis, a master bedroom had its own private wing, and was balanced by a family room on the other side of the central core. Interiors, as originally designed, had an array of fashionable furniture by leading American manufacturers, such as Herman Miller and Knoll. Victor G. Canzani served as the original interior designer, mixing and matching Modern furniture pieces by George Nelson, Eero Saarinen and Estelle and Erwin Laverne, instaling a curvilinear plastic bathroom designed by noted industrial designer Henry Dreyfuss (1904-1972), and creating a miracle kitchen filled with Kelviantor's futuristic appliances.

Alteration

Disneyland officials renovated the The Monsanto House of the Future exhibit twice in a decade before deciding to raze it.

Demolition

Disney officials demolshed the Monsanto House of the Future in 09/1967. Demolition proved problematic, and what was scheduled to take a day of wrecking took a full two weeks. The DOCOMOMO US web site indicated: "Disneyland spent two weeks attempting to demolish the Monsanto House in 1967 as part of a redesign of Tomorrowland. Wrecking balls bounced off the walls, and the Park was forced to scrape the plastic into pieces sizeable enough to haul away." (See DOCOMOMO US "Monsanto House of the Future,"Accessed 08/28/2012.)

Alan Hess elaborated on the House of Tomorrow's demolition: "Finally, the house was torn down to make way for a new Tomorrowland. But it didn't go without a fight. A wrecking ball was brought in, but instead of knocking the house off its pedestal the ball just bounced off the plastic walls. After assaults from torches, jackhammers and chainsaws, the walls remained relatively unscathed. Finally the wreckers had to bring in a clamshell on a crane to munch off pieced small enough to be hauled away. What was scheduled to take one day took two weeks." (See Alan Hess, "Monsanto House of the Future," Fine Homebuilding, no. 34, 08-09/1986, p. 75.) Additional hand labor was required to break the broken pieces into manageable shards that could be carted away. The location was absorbed into "Alpine Land," and a souvenir stand occupied the House of Tomorrow's precise spot. At present, parts of the foundation have survived and were tinted green at some point.

PCAD id: 11149