WILMINGTON, Del. — Rich Garrett's home has next to no closet space. When it rains, he says, its plastic composite shell makes it sound like "Tupperware in a dishwasher." There's hardly a true right angle to be found in it.
And he loves the place.
Garrett lives in a Futuro home, a prefabricated structure designed by Finnish architect Matti Suuronen to represent the height of 1960s modernism, on the property of the Eagle Crest Aerodrome near Milton. It's one of two Futuros in Delaware, and only perhaps 100 were made in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
First State Focus: Futuro House
From the outside, the home has a UFO's silhouette, looking like a sphere evenly flattened to a doughnut's shape. The outer wall is plastic, with a rigid foam core underneath and a fiberglass interior wall.
On the inside, as Garrett pointed out in a tour, nearly every furnishing and trim piece is shallowly curved because the home itself has no right-angle walls. Countertops, closet doors, seats: all sloped.
Appliances like a fridge and electric oven are RV-scale, and the home is climate-controlled with an A/C unit and a heat pump.
Garrett moved to Delaware when the medical supply company he worked for in Chicago was bought by a Milton firm. He always delighted in owning odd cars and motorcycles, and said stumbling upon the Futuro for rent was a chance he couldn't pass up.
"If the Futuro has a tradeoff it is a lack of closet space. A function of the shape. One tends not to acquire too much," Garrett said.
"Visitors are a delight. Some, of course, know about Futuro houses from online. ... You must understand that Finnish people are heavy drinkers, second only behind the Russians. In that light, does the design make more sense?"
