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Futuro in the 1990s and after owed something to the
postmodern art-craft-design debate that raged in the
’80s and also to a growing revival of interest in the ’60s
and a taste for the retro. The Futuro was announced
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exhibited at the Vienna Secession in 1996 and acquired
the following year by the Utrecht Centraal Museum
in Holland. A new generation of fans yearned to own
one. In 2002 Major and Darragh bought a Futuro that
had been at Warrington, north of Dunedin, since the
1970s. They loved it. With their son, Buster, they took
their annual holidays there. They liked Warrington
itself, and enjoyed the house. It was ‘warm and dry,
funky and stylish’.^20 But not stylish in the original
Finnish way. That would have come later. Typical
of New Zealand Futuros, it was a case of Kiwi bach
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but a row of ordinary seating around the curve of the
wall. A previous owner had removed the partitions
to the interior space except for the entrance lobby
and the bathroom. There was orange Formica in the
kitchen and PVC plumbing. They intended to bring
the building to Auckland once they had found a
suitable piece of land near the sea to put it on, and
had collected all the classic period furniture to put in
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and chairs with ‘wine-glass’ bases, 1960s glasses and
cutlery, lampshades, the lot.^21 Defeated by Auckland
prices, they sold it in 2010. That Thunderbird won out
in the end.
Nick McQuoid of Rangiora has been called ‘the
premier Futuro house owner in the world’ by one
who knows: the Grumpy Old Limey, chronicler of
the Futuro phenomenon worldwide.^22 McQuoid is
a property developer and Uber driver who lives
in Christchurch but keeps his Futuro collection in
Rangiora, working on them in his spare time. He
remembers driving past one with his parents when
he was young. It chimed with his boyhood reading
matter. An attempt to buy that very one about 2012
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$260,000. Far cheaper was one at Kaimaumau on the(above) Judy Darragh, Grant
Major & Buster Darragh-
Major with their Futuro at
Warrington
(left) Taking apart and
reassembling the Paringa
River Futuro house
(Photographs:
Nick McQuoid)
(opposite above) Inside the
Futuro belonging to Grant
Major & Judy Darragh
(opposite below) Futuro
conversions in Christchurch:
on left, a restaurant on Main
South Road; on right, a house
on Mays Road