November 2004

1. End of another year
2. Opening of our 1910 reproduction, and the winners are….
3. A prediction of how we would live and the homes we would build today from exactly 50 years ago.

Hello!

2004 – just another year?

It’s the end of another year and as we say, “see you later” to 2004 I’d like to take a moment to reflect on what’s happened and how lucky we are because of where we live. World stability has taken a bit of a body hit but love them or loath them, agree with them or not, the fact is if it wasn’t for America probably everything we value and cherish may not exist. Also, when countries are threatened and the UN can’t help, as is often the case, who do we/they turn to for some muscles, America. The Australians too recognise that their security and stability is greatly enhanced because of their political alliance with America. That’s why the Howard Government swept back into power with an even greater majority.

However, we should never be complacent. Take time out to admire and appreciate where we live – NZ. And regularly tell those closest to us that we admire, appreciate and love them. And finally, remember to live each day as if it were your last because one day it will be.

2004 – Moss Brothers new replica showhome opens.

Over the last 15 years Moss Brothers has evolved to where it has now become recognised as a leading New Zealand replica or reproduction house design and build specialist. Quite an achievement but we promise not to rest on our laurels.

Over the two weekends that we officially opened our latest showhome (back in July) Moss Brothers had two draws for those that attended and filled out a registration form. And by the way, we had about 1600 people through the showhome over those first two weekends. I’m just confirming that Denzil Wilkinson won the mystery weekend for two where she and her husband are off to see Neil Diamond at the Westpac Stadium and they’ll stay at a 5 star hotel overnight, should be fun.

And Tania & Mark Scott won $15,000.00 toward their kitchen joinery if they sign-up to build with Moss Brothers before June 2006. I’m sure they will make every effort to do so.

At home, 2004 AD

Attached is an article that was written by an American architect back in 1954. In it he talks about his prediction on how we will live and the housing we will live in, in 2004. Some of his predictions are quite accurate while other ideas are way off the mark. One thing that he never saw coming was the computer age and how above almost all other things it has changed our lives the most.

AT HOME, 2004 A.D.

Written By Carson Kerr - POPULAR MECHANICS October 1954

SUPPOSE it’s a sunny Saturday in 2004 A.D. and you’re on your way to visit the Smiths in Atom Ville, one of America’s new-completely new communities. A supersonic airliner is taking you there and, in an almost unbelievably short time, it approaches the Atom Ville airport. This city of twenty-first century is laid out along strict radial lines, its streets is running in concentric rings from the center and its homes all look-alikes. From the air, the residential areas resemble huge landscaped parks, criss-crossed with highways like the spokes of a colossal wheel.

Shortly after the ship lands you transfer to a helicopter bus which has been waiting to whisk plane passengers to the city’s center. On the way you notice there is more traffic in the air than on the streets below, downtown, you take a taxi to Smith home.

When you ring the doorbell, you’re greeted with a cheery call coming from inside the house, where you’ve been recognized on the TV intercom. This, of course, comes as no surprise as home sight-and-sound hook-ups were common back in 1970.

What does open your eyes is the Smith’s new dishwashing system, which has only recently been installed. Because the novelty hasn’t been worn off, your hostess loses no time in demonstrating what she can do with it by just pushing a button. She serves you afternoon coffee, after which the dishes and silverware are placed in a cabinet alongside the table. The system is then set in motion and the dishes disappear through the door in a wall. A few minutes later, Mrs. Smith suggests that you step into the kitchen to see these same articles-clean, dry and sterile-neatly arranged in another cabinet there. Like all other kitchen components, she explains, this cabinet is mobile and can be raised or lowered with the pull of a lever. The conveyor-dishwasher can be easily switched from one outlet to another, and preset to clean, sort and store even the finest china with speed and safety.

After suggesting a new arrangement for the kitchen, you ask, “Where’s Bill?” “He’s working an extra day this week,” she answers, “but doesn’t mind it much. Since becoming a copter commuter he saves more than eight hours a week in traveling time. He’ll be dropping down in about 10 minutes, so let’s go out and watch for him.”

Waiting for Bill to hover over the house, you ascend the ramp to the roof. As you look up and down the street, you’re struck by the total absence of unsightly poles and the fact that nowhere in sight is there a dwelling larger than a one-family unit. Air transportation is making the multi-family apartment house obsolete, as each family now needs a private landing strip.

You’re impressed by the aesthetic landscaping on all sides. Even a casual glance shows you that the Smiths and their neighbors have brought true meaning to that mid-twentieth-century housing cliché of “living on all of your lot.” Although the homes are hidden under earthen shells, these coverings are open at the sides and terraced lawns and gardens surround the buildings.

Dozens of helicopters, convertiplanes and other aircraft are coming and going overhead and you watch a “converti” come to rest on a roof up the street, Mrs. Smith points out that they use their car mostly for visiting in the neighborhood and hardly ever drive it outside Atom Ville.

Right on schedule, Smith sets his six-passenger helicopter on the near-by landing strip, then hops out to shake hands with you. He takes you abroad the copter, taxis down the ramp and parks it in the flyport. Later, as you sit chatting by the swimming pool, he tells you how he came close to colliding with a converti on the way home when the pilot flying in front of him failed to signal for a drop-down.

“It’s a good thing our ‘eggbeater’ has a radar safety system,” he remarks. “They’ll probably make it compulsory equipment any day now.”

The foregoing glimpse of family life in the next century is no idle daydream. It’s the authoritative view taken by California architect and interior designer Paul Laszlo, who has pioneered many of today’s building trends and accurately predicted others. This forecast is the result, not only of the result, not only of the 30 years in which he has become increasingly famous for design, construction and decoration, but of three of study and experimentation during which he conferred with manufacturers, transportation heads and communications experts as well as architects and contractors.

To some, perfection of the hydrogen bomb has meant profound anxiety; for others, it holds the promise of permanent peace, Laszlo looks beyond both and sees it as the beginning of a period of unprecedented progress out of which must come a whole new way of life.

“I think of how the atomic-age houses will look,” he says, “when man’s mastery of the atom will maintain life. Innovations will become apparent that will make Bucky Fuller’s Dymaxion house and his geodesic dome appear old-fashioned. When I say that the family of the future will go underground, I’m immediately categorized as a political pessimist. Let us say I hope for the best, but would want to be prepared for the worst.

“Subterranean construction would not be just a protective measure. To begin with air transportation will be the main mode of travel, requiring an absence of obstructions and an abundance of landing areas. Increasing population will put a premium on acreage and will eventually result in tree-level use of a lot-living below the surface, landing on it and doing most of our traveling above it.”

Laszlo’s theories are not to be taken lightly, because his background makes him highly qualified to forecast future trends. Born in Hungary, a member of a family of furniture manufacturers, he got an early start on a designing and decorating career. He opened his first office in Vienna in 1923 and, when he moved to Berlin shortly afterward, quickly established an enviable reputation as a creator of commercial buildings, residences, interiors and industrial products during the pre-Hitler period when Germany was a world center of modern architecture.

Emigrating to America in 1936, Laszlo continued to develop a design for living he had helped originate, one combining beauty, comfort and convenience, making use of relatively simple and inexpensive materials and expressing itself in one-story houses, informal plans and highly developed outdoor areas.

The majority of architects design homes as building-making the plans, outlining the details, getting a contractor to build them and leaving the interiors up to the owners. Laszlo does things differently. His houses are completely planned from construction site to lighting, furnishing, color and accessories; and he stays with each one until the last detail is completed.

He predicts that the highly organized society of his futuristic suburbia will prohibit individuality as far as selection of homesite is concerned, but that there will be much to compensate for this loss.

He sees the home of the future with a steel and concrete “mechanical core” roof, carrying a series of tubes to provide every possible utility, facility and service. This system will include telephone, water and sewer connections plus a supply of atomic energy for heating, lighting and power coming from a central source.

Concrete uprights are set around the Laszlo house of the future. The sidewalls are set at an angle and the interior is divided into two sections, one containing kitchen and dining facilities. Between the two is play area on the side near the main yard. Although maximum floor space will be fixed by the site, interior decoration will be individual except for some walls and service elements that will be prefabricated for economy. Individually designed partitions and furniture, as well as varied use of the overhead lighting and heating panel, will be matters of personal choice.

Automatic appliances plus advances in community childcare will provide the housewife of the future with a great deal of spare time. Shopping will be simplified by selections being made from displays televised in color and 3-D. Deliveries will be made via citywide pneumatic tube system. Anything that can’t be delivered or picked up pneumatically, such as clothing that has be fitted or rugs and drapes that must be measured, will be handled through small stores on wheels.

Despite increased population, beaches will be less crowded than today. The bathroom as we know it will be a thing of the past and bathing will have come out of the dark. Revived along ancient Roman lines, it will have become as refined and traditionalized as it is now in Finland and Japan. Americans in the atomic age will enjoy a bath in spacious, glass-enclosed areas open to the light, heat and health-giving rays of the sun, with adjacent outdoor pools.

Laszlo’s home-of-the-future contains 1800 square feet. His house could be built today, exclusive of such innovations as atomic energy and pneumatic-tube connections, for about one third more than the cost of a conventional home. Fifty years from now it will cost much less.

“There’s no doubt that prefabrication will become widely accepted,” he asserts, “because it is the answer to the price problem. When building costs are high and attempts are made to build cheaply, the slums of the future are crated. Today’s big housing projects mark the beginning of a trend toward standardization, which means steady progress in prefabrication. The privacy of a design such as mine eliminates one of the objectionable features of mass housing. Eventually, we’; have completely prefabricated communities.”

Of course, Laszlo doesn’t want to stick out his neck and say that he expects his forecast to bear fruit inside of 50 years, but there are good reasons to assume that it will. Those who regard it as fanciful should be reminded that 50 years ago much of what is commonplace today could be found only in science fiction. Certainly, scientific progress during the next half-century should be greatly accelerated by atomic research.

It’s more than possible that Paul Laszlo’s predictions are actually quite conservative, that they represent only a small part of what will have become reality by 2004. Science is now standing on the threshold of a new era.

Yours sincerely
Julian Moss &
The team at Moss Brothers Housing

More and more inquires and sales are from beyond the toll free area of our office. Because of this, for your convenience we have a 0800 free-help phone line to our office. So if you have any questions or queries you can contact me on 0800-66-77-27. Also our new usual phone number has changed to 06-370-2058