"The home of the future" wasn't just about what was inside the house. What the house was made of and how it was designed always figured prominently. Many mid-century people were enthralled with the possibilities that new materials has opened up. Just as Dustin Hoffman's character in "The Graduate" was advised in 1967, there was a big future in plastics. Forty years ago, many people were a little too convinced that plastics were going to rule the future. They envisioned plastic clothing, plastic furniture, and even totally plastic houses; egg-shaped, even. Well, plastic did end up dominating the home of the future, but in a more subtle way than they envisioned. We do wear largely plastic shoes and plastics like polyester, rayon, and nylon are still widely used in our clothing. We even have fleece jackets made of recycled plastic soda bottles. But plastic furniture is still relegated mostly to the McDonald's and the back patio, and nobody but the truly eccentric lives in a gleaming white plastic egg-shaped house today.
Nevertheless, a typical home today is loaded with plastic. Exteriors, especially, are often completely clad in plastic: namely, vinyl siding, which has largely replaced wood and aluminum in many areas. Other exterior materials, which have always suffered the ravages of sun and water, have been replaced by plastic, such as decks and exterior trim made of plastic lumber molded to look like wood.
Other materials have come onto the scene, all promising traditional looks with low maintenance: siding made of a cellulose-cement mixture, doors made of fiberglass molded to look like wood, windows made of vinyl or fiberglass, roof tiles made of concrete to look like clay or slate, roofing made of asphalt-impregnated fiberglass, countertops made of composites of stone and plastic, durable epoxy finishes that look like paint.
Though the majority of home insulation in the U.S. is still that itchy fiberglass we all know, most of the more-efficient types of home insulation today use polystyrene or polyurethane foam, either in sheets or sprayed into place. Some of the newer building methods even use blocks or sheets of foam as integral parts of the home's structure.
Though today's homes mostly look a lot like yesterday's homes, construction methods have changed. Energy efficiency is now mandated by building codes, so today's homes are more comfortable and cheaper to heat, but the demands of the modern economy mean that by and large they're constructed rather cheaply and without the detail or craftsmanship that used to be common. Whereas 70 years ago a brick house was made of brick, it's now made of wood, insulation, some layers of high tech fabric, and a thin veneer of brick, and probably only on the front (who do theythink they're fooling?). However, thanks to modern engineering know-how and building codes, that house with the thin layer of brick is much warmer in winter and much better able to withstand a hurricane or an earthquake than even the most well-built house from the 1920s.
The home is one of the last major consumer goods a typical person will buy that isn't entirely mass-produced using modern manufacturing techniques. Though some are, most homes today are still hand-built on-site, whereas virtually everything else we own is built on an assembly line in a factory. But over the years, more and more of the components of the house are built in factories and merely assembled on-site. Many homes now use prefab roof trusses, wall sections, and even precast concrete foundation panels. Every year, a new house is less the product of skilled craftspeople, and more like Ikea furniture. This would not surprise the early 20th century futurist at all, who probably would expect houses to be 100% pre-fabricated by now, and dropped into place by atomic-powered zeppelins.
Architecture
Architects, like all artists, have an intrinsic desire to blaze new trails, and the past hundred years has seen a lot of amazing, wonderful, and crazy residential architecture. But when it comes to an expensive, permanent thing like a house, we're pretty conservative, so the house of the future really doesn't look that futuristic. But that's not because the world's architects haven't been busy. In fact, they've been doing what we really need architects for: making our homes better at what we need them for. And this didn't happen though whimsical exterior eye-candy, but rather in internal reconfiguration, and improvements in materials and engineering.
We already discussed the radical changes in the kitchen, but other areas of the house have also experienced big changes. Some have been super-sized, like the kitchen: closets and garages, particularly. Especially garages. Most high-end homes today have three or even four oversized garage bays. Today's high-end garage is larger than yesterday's high-end home. On the flip side, some rooms have shrunk or even disappeared. Formal living and dining rooms are on their way out, replaced by great rooms that integrate living space with the kitchen area. Just as parlors and butler's pantries faded away, home theaters and home offices are being designed into new homes instead of merely retrofitted from existing rooms. On the whole, one of the main hallmarks of today's home is its tremendous size. The average home is 50% larger today than it was 35 years ago.
