X
Xanadu Houses
Definition Experimental homes designed to
showcase new architectural methods and home
technology
Place Wisconsin Dells, Wisconsin; Kissimmee,
Florida; and Gatlinburg, Tennessee
The three Xanadu Houses built in the United States in the
1980’s were meant to showcase and promote new architec-
tural methods and home automation systems, though in re-
ality the houses were merely tourist attractions, and their
methods and ideologies were never widely adopted.
The Xanadu House project was born in 1979, the
brainchild of Bob Masters, who envisioned a future
of ergonomically designed houses built with novel
materials and featuring advanced computer tech-
nology. The first Xanadu House was designed by ar-
chitect Stewart Gordon and built in Wisconsin Dells,
Wisconsin. The second, and by far the best known
of the houses, was designed by Roy Mason and built
in 1983 in Kissimmee, Florida, to take advantage of
the tourist population drawn to the area by Disney’s
Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow
(EPCOT) Center. The final house was located in
Gatlinburg, Tennessee.
The houses were designed to be energy efficient
and very quickly built by spraying polyurethane in-
sulating foam over inflatable balloon forms. The re-
sulting structures were bright white and had gently
curving lines, both inside and out, which, visitors
often thought, resembled something from a science-
fiction film. An integrated computer system con-
trolled virtually every aspect of the homes’ func-
tioning, from watering plants in the greenhouses to
suggesting nutritious menus and helping to prepare
meals. The designers intended for such labor-saving
devices to leave more time for families to come
together around the “electronic hearth”—a high-
technology entertainment center featuring multiple
televisions, video games, stereo equipment, and, in
at least one of the homes, a video screen showing an
image of a cozy fire.Impact Though they were meant to showcase seri-
ous architectural possibilities for the future and to
change the way people interacted with their shel-
ters, in truth the Xanadu Houses never quite rose
above the status of curiosity or tourist attraction. The
Kissimmee Xanadu House, by far the most popular
of the three, attracted more than one thousand visi-
tors per day during its peak of popularity in the mid-
1980’s. Despite their grand vision, however, the ar-
chitects never really reckoned with the tastes and
preferences of ordinary home buyers. No one, in
fact, ever lived in any of the Xanadu Houses.
The rooms in the houses were small, and the
curved walls could make them feel cramped and
cavelike; the building materials were not well suited
to stand up over the long term to the ravages of
weather; and many people found the designs, rem-
iniscent of science fiction, strange and even ugly.
Perhaps most important, rapid developments in tech-
nology made many of the homes’ “futuristic” fea-
tures quickly obsolete. The Wisconsin and Tennes-
see houses were demolished in the 1990’s, and even
the once-popular Florida house closed in 1996 and
was demolished in 2005.Further Reading
Mason, Roy, et al. “A Day at Xanadu.”Futurist 18
(February, 1984): 17-24.
Mason, Roy, Lane Jennings, and Robert Evans.
Xanadu: The Computerized Home of Tomorrow and
How It Can Be Yours Today!New York: Acropolis
Books, 1983.
Janet E. GardnerSee also Architecture; CAD/CAM technology;
Computers; Deconstructivist architecture.