The Disneyland Monsanto House of the Future, was built in 1957 as part of the concept for the Tomorrowland exhibition. The attraction offered a tour of a home of the future, set in the year 1986, and featured household appliances such as microwave ovens. The house was demolished in 1967.
Designed by MIT and built by Monsanto in the 1950s, the house it offered Disneyland guests a view into the futuristic home life of 1986:
As part of the exhibit, the future show home the home exhibited “plastics, the newest and most challenging category of building materials,” among other innovations. Today plastic materials remain common in homes, although repurposed in different ways to how Disney executives might have imagined in 1957. For this reason plastics remain central to the smart home and smart city concepts.
Taking three areas where the 1957 ideas can be compared with 2017 innovations, the association with plastic materials remains unwavering. Looking at lighting first, the 1957 home featured polarized plastic ceiling panels and push-button technology. In contrast, today a notable innovation is with automated and motion-sensor lighting systems of LED, which are designed to improve on efficiency and decrease needs for electricity.
The second area is with insulation. The 1957 vision involved virgin plastic insulation designed keep your home temperate. Today there are products that provide dual-pane windows made of vinyl offer extra insulation and solar panels, such as ZeroHouse2.0, which has been designed by U.S. house builder KB. Several of these houses in Florida are cooled by a 19 SEER Carrier heat pump. The homes are also is equipped with a Rainwater Hog modular rainwater collection system, which is used for landscape irrigation as well as an emergency water supply for the home’s occupants. A future possibility is homes of this design, connected via the Internet of Things, to form a ‘smart city.‘
The third are of plastic-based technology is with kitchen appliances. With the 1957 home of the future a microwave range to cook foods at the same time at amazing speed and a sonic wave dishwasher were debuted. Today, and with house of tomorrow there will likely be far fewer appliances, but more powerful ones. On the market now are Alexa-enabled ovens that allow the user to set timers remotely and research recipes. Moreover, Google Home and Amazon Echo can be synced to certain smart appliances, allowing users to ask for coffee to be brewed by speaking into a smartphone. A different device comes from the German company Thermomix, called the TM5. This multi-functional smart kitchen appliance combines the functions of a high-speed blender, slow-cooker, mixer, food processor, sous-vide machine, steamer, and smartphone. A third area is with the smart refrigerator, such as the Samsung Family Hub. This device has cameras inside the fridge which take images of the food inside and lets the owners access the feed from their smartphone, so they can check to see if you need to pick up more milk before you leave work.
These examples of plastic based materials being part of the innovative home of today and of tomorrow are in keeping with a new report by McKinsey, the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, and the World Economic Forum called ‘The new plastics economy: Rethinking the future of plastics.‘ As well as addressing important areas like dealing with plastic waste and reducing dependency upon fossil fuels, the report places plastics as central to household products and technology, signaling a note to developers and start-ups that plastic materials need to remain central to the smart home products market.
