Tales of Future Past v2

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Ideal Home: 1980

Future House

If nothing else, learn from the masters. Alison & Peter Smithson for the Ideal Home Exhibition of 1956 designed this House of Tomorrow c. 1980. Atomic powered and about as welcoming as the gent's toilet at King's Cross.

True it had shortwave remote control cubes to control all the mod cons and self-cleaning bathrooms that would have made a cheap hotel chain proud, but note the plastic paneling -- the hard, slippery floor; the dead, sterile decor; the painfully uncomfortable furniture; and the pointless pillow on the floor.

I don't know if we should be more grateful that we dodged this or the clothing.

However,  the most disturbing prediction of the future was not the beds with no sheets where the dwellers of 1980 would apparently sleep in their street clothes. That honour is reserved for the peculiar window in the bedroom for the use of perfect strangers to infringe on the sleepers' personal freedoms.

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