The flying saucer house at 13 Park Road is a Warrington landmark!!!
Please only do this cache in the daytime, because it wouldn't be polite to disturb the owners and you won't see the house properly at night anyhow.
Stand on the roadside to find this cache, don't go up the bank. It is a black 50 ml pill bottle, bring your own pen. Make sure you put leaves or twigs over the cache again so it cant be seen.
This Futuro house was on display at the 1974 Commonwealth Games and then moved to Warrington in 1975. Part of the sale conditions were that the new owners had to open it to the public for 2 days. 5000 people turned up and there was such a traffic jam the police had to be called to sort it out.
Want to see what the house looks like inside, yes of course we do! Luckily the owner has shared there photos on the NZ Futuro House facebook page, you can see them below.
Futuro houses were designed by Architect Matti Suuronen from Finland in 1968, as a ski cabin that would be quick to heat and easy to construct in difficult mountainside terrain. It is made of fibreglass-reinforced polyester plastic in 16 segments that bolt together. It could be put together by hand in two days or else delivered to the site fully assembled by helicopter. The only foundations needed were four concrete piers.
Futuro houses were not a commercial success, they were a bit too different and the oil crisis in the early 70’s made plastic too expensive. Only 96 Futuro houses were ever built, 15 of those made by a Christchurch company under licence. Apparently there are 8 Futuro houses still used in NZ. In the paper 4 April 2009 it said the then owner wanted to move this house to Auckland but now it looks like it’s staying here in Dunedin, hooray.
Futuro houses arent made any more, but maybe because there aren't many of them and they are so odd, there are obsessed people who love the spaceship houses and have made whole websites about them.
Wikipedia Futuro site https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futuro
This is a Wikipedia site, it is only for information, it has other links to maps and photos of where the houses are all over the world.
Floor plan, http://www.futurohouse.com/floorplan.html
This is a hobby website site by a person who has a hobby of trying to find where all the Futuro houses are, he says so far about 60% of the about 96 houses are accounted for.
The owner of this Warrington house started a facebook group for NZ owners, just for fun, https://www.facebook.com/Futuro-Homes-of-New-Zealand-913605318672634/
A blog about what its like living in a spaceship house by owners in Christchurch http://outofthisworldnz.blogspot.co.nz/2011/11/birds-eye-view.html
The Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design in London has restored a spacehip house and has a website about how it is designed http://futurohouse.co.uk/history.html