104
DON BASSETT
Like the futurist movement before it in Italy, the
Futuro house^1 announced in its very name a self-
conscious awareness not only of its modernity, but
its intentions regarding the here-to-come. While it
can be argued that the Italian futurists were less of
the moment (let alone the future) than their French
cousins the cubists, the Futuro houses were very
much of their time, although their early promise and
excitement did not last. Now they are retro cult objects
for collectors of the funky with a name that has been
appropriated by investment bankers.
Among the collectors of Futuro houses in New
Zealand have been Nick McQuoid of Rangiora (still an
avid enthusiast and owner of several over the years)
and, in Auckland, Grant Major and Judy Darragh who
bought one at Warrington, near Dunedin, in 2002,
and used it as a holiday home for a decade. Major,
an art director of films by Peter Jackson and Niki
Caro (amongst others), has a fine collection of ‘mid-
twentieth-century icons’, which included (at the same
time as the Futuro) a 1964 Ford Thunderbird. Darragh
is a well-known artist and doyenne of neo-pop. The
three have over the years communicated with an
international body of enthusiasts, not to say fanatics.
One of these is a self-described ‘Grumpy Old Limey’
(an Englishman and long-term resident of Dallas,
Form Follows Fantasy
The Futuro House in New Zealand
Texas) whose websites track McQuoid’s Rangiora
collection, as well as other Futuros around the globe.^2
Major and Darragh communicated for a while in 2005
with an American named Rich Pisani who admitted
to spending ‘100’s and 100’s of hours on the internet’
tracking down Futuros worldwide with an ambition
to ‘create a history timeline (flight log) of each one’.^3
The Futuro house was the invention of a Finn,
Matti Suuronen (1933–2013), one of a brace of
experimental mid-twentieth-century architects
from Finland (Alvar Aalto and Eero Saarinen are
the most famous). Suuronen had marked out a
career as a designer of functionalist buildings such
as grain silos, petrol stations, kiosks and various
solutions for housing. He was especially interested
in prefabrication and the use of plastics. A friend of
Suuronen asked him in 1965 to design an after-ski hut
for a remote location amongst the lakes and snow of
Finland. The answer was this ellipsoid capsule of a
house with windows of the same shape encircling it.
It was made of fibreglass-reinforced polyester plastic
in segments that might be taken apart like an orange.
It was compact, it was portable and the materials
durable. It could be loaded onto a truck in pieces
or suspended whole from a helicopter. Once at the
desired site and assembled, it would be supported
on a ring with adjustable legs (or in some American
cases the legs protrude directly from the body) and