Greetings Earthlings, Take Me to Your Futuro House

Home to about 4,000 people, the village of Carlisle, OH is a place of almosts and in betweens. In between Dayton and Cincinnati, almost big enough to be a city. Sounds like your typical Ohio small town, right? Almost. Juxtaposed behind one of the town's numerous corn fields and a 19th century farmhouse sits something in between the known and the unknown: a spaceship.

Photo courtesy of Lyinn Wolf:   http://lyinnwolf.blogspot.com/2012/09/

Growing up down the road from "the spaceship house", it served as a local landmark for directions, a source of quirky small town pride, and as the foundation for more than one April Fools joke by local newspapers and nearby parks. Although it was a constant comfort, the spaceship house was also somewhat of a mystery. It is a private residence, but no one in town seems to know who lives there or how long the house has been in Carlisle.

What is known however, is that the house is an example of a Futuro House, a late 1960's invention by Finnish architect Matti Suuronen. He began marketing the design as a portable and quick to heat ski cabin that could be easily transported across difficult terrain. Suuronen envisioned his Futuro House as a popular, cheap, mass produced home that could be used across the globe. What Suuronen was not prepared for however, was the intense backlash to the design and aesthetic, many believing it to be simply too ugly to exist alongside the beautiful mountain scenery of Finland. Coupled with the 1973 oil crisis that made the production of plastics extremely expensive, the Futuro House ceased production and only around 100 were estimated to have been built. Only around 20 survive today, most in disrepair or in museums, however a few are still owned by private individuals, like the house in Carlisle. The Carlisle Futuro House has the distinction of being possibly the only double Futuro House in existence. Somewhere along the way, two Futuro Houses have been linked by a metal walkway to create the infamous roadside attraction.

Photo by Krista Dunkman

How the Futuro House came to Carlisle we may never know, and rumors surrounding its history are varied. Some say the house was once a single Futuro and used to sit at the Wright Brothers Airport in Springboro, OH. Others say the house used to be a donut shop until the second Futuro was flown in by helicopter, then linked with the first to become a private residence. For the town of Carlisle, the unknown origin of the spaceship house seems to be part of its appeal, with multiple blogs and websites dedicated to uncovering any shred of evidence about the house's narrative. For now though, the history of Carlisle's Futuro House will remain somewhere in between fact and folklore.

- Krista Dunkman

Sources:

http://www.thefuturohouse.com/Futuro-Carlisle-Ohio-USA.html

https://www.ohiomagazine.com/ohio-life/article/-the-futuro-house