Form Follows Fantasy

Like the futurist movement before it in Italy, the Futuro house¹ 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, Texas) whose websites track McQuoid’s Rangiora collection, as well as other Futuros around the globe. 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’. 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 Smooth surfaces meant that upkeep was minimal. A range of colours was available that were through-dyed, lasting as long as the Futuro did itself. Even in the snowy wastes of Finland the house could be heated to a comfortable temperature in 30 minutes.