All-plastic molded home dramatically emphasizes not only beauty and flexibility of product but also its strength as a structural material. Despite fragile appearance, house is sturdy. Cantilevered modules are able to support over 13 tons — twice design loads.
The house was opened to the public in June. Some of the innovations in the house, pictured on these pages, may not be commercially available for years. But in the meantime, like the special applications of plastics in the House of the Future, these imaginative new electronic and mechanical aids to man's health, convenience and pleasure can be market- and engineer-researched from every angle. In one bold leap, Monsanto and its cooperating partners* feel, design and engineering temporarily have gone ahead, rather than merely kept the traditional two paces behind the housing needs and desires of Americans.
The House of the Future isn't Monsanto's only club in the bag when it comes to plastics-in-building research. At St. Louis early this spring the company's Inorganic Chemicals Division opened a large laboratory building which is doubling as a proving ground for plastics. Plastics, for example, face the building blocks and structural panels on the exterior, are being used as pipes, drawer liners, walls, ceilings, floors and even in some new, highly efficient vent fans indoors. The gentle compound curves of the House of the Future and the glazed turquoise face of the new St. Louis laboratory represent the best use of plastics technology for the moment. Both were designed to stimulate creative thought among builders, architects and the plastics industry—and to feed back a continual stream of practical information. Research years are telescoped very quickly into months in this fashion.
Pushbuttons replace telephone dial. Screens permit user to see party on line or callers at door. Repertory dialing simplifies reaching, remembering frequently called numbers.
