Future House

In its extensive campaign to improve U. S. housing, and incidentally sell more electric equipment, General Electric Co. extensively backed prefabricated houses known as American Motohomes, produced by American Houses, Inc. (TIME, April 1). They were well planned, built of asbestos and cement panels, were portable and equipped with every modern gadget, including airconditioning. And they have sold well. But the trouble was that after nearly a year General Electric discovered that Motohomes did not solve the problem they were after. Designed for mass production, they are not being mass produced, are too expensive for the man earning between $2,000 and $3,000 a year.

With appropriate ceremonies the result of General Electric's further cogitations was unveiled on the eleventh floor of Rockefeller Center in Manhattan last week: a $5,500 five-room house, also air-conditioned, also equipped with gadgets. To design the Future House, as the new experiment is called, General Electric months ago held an architectural competition. The prize-winning house proved still too expensive for their purposes. Future House as erected last week was an adaptation of the plan of Architects Walker & Gillette, No. 20 in the program.

No trick methods of construction were employed, and few trick building materials were used. Basically the house is a floor plan so shrewdly thought out that 80% of the building's enclosed space is usable, in contrast to about 65% in ordinary dwellings. Like the Motohome, it has a prefabricated bathroom, a kitchen which includes a washing machine and electric dishwasher with its standard equipment. No particular exterior finish is specified. For approximately the same price the Future House may be built in honest modern cement or veneered to look like a Cape Cod cottage or a Spanish hacienda.

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