A house is a machine for living in...An armchair is a machine for sitting in and so on...Our modern life...has created its own objects : its costume, its fountain pen, its telephone...Our epoch is fixing its own style day by day. It is there under our eyes. Eyes which do not see.
LeCorbusier
In the 1850's, a French magician and inventor Jean Eugene Robert-Houdin, filled his house with electrical and mechanical gadgets including a system of centrally-controlled alarm clocks to wake the servants, an automatic horse-feeder and a complex system of bells to detect visitors. The magician used to invite many of his friends over to his house in order not just to host a nice dinner or tea party but also to show his inventions and how they work. His house appears to be in some sense a stage on which a technological magical wonder was realised.
Houdin's entrance gate arrangement
Then in 1931 The Apartment Charles de Beistegui was constructed by LeCorbusier. A small rooftop addition to an existing 19th century building in Paris. The roof-top addition did not function as a machine for living, it incorporated rather extraordinary mechanical services away from the standard domestic technologies. As the owner (de Bestegui) was interested in surrealism, the gadgets and of course their effects were a direct response to the client's interest. Electricity was used to power mechanisms for moving interior doors. The Paris view from the windows was manipulated inside the apartment. Scenes were collected with a periscope on the roof and projected onto an interior screen which appeared through an automated mechanism.
The apartment by LeCorbusier
Moving into the future the house acted as a site of experimentations, for interaction between private inhabitation and public consumerism. The House Of The Future 1956 included features such as domestic gadgetry, self washing glass walls, self cleaning bath. These innovations were more evocative.
Jacques Tati's film Mon Oncle (1958) presented a comic/satiric perception of the modern house. The kitchen was presented with an automated steak-grilling flipper, in the front garden a fountain in a metallic fish shape.
Jacque Tati's Mon Oncle
Today's house is all about technology, luxury and sleek lines. The transformation of the dumb box into the smart house.
My question is what is the house of the future today. Is it possible that the machines or gadgets have taken over our lives entirely that we need a new word for what we mean house now. But the limits of differentiation between inhabiting a space and living within a space are very thin. Is it possible that today LeCorbusier's addition to an already existing house is the house of the future? Are designers the new magicians? Where does the theatricality of technology stop?
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