A Venturo house that was planned for restoration to bring it back to its former glory was sold to a museum for $315,000.
Ohoka spaceship owner, Nick McQuoid, was already planning to restore his rare 70s Venturo house to its original condition, the Stuff reported. He bought the Venturo some years ago and had it transferred from Invercargill. The Venturo was believed to have been used as an office during the time Manapouri Dam was being constructed.
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Plans to restore them to mint condition to make a holiday home retreat were already in place, but people kept "buying my stuff," Nick McQuoid said. But the offer from the Museum of Old and New Art (MONA) in Tasmania was too good to turn down; thus, the restoration plans had to be shelved.
McQuoid said that the museum already bought a Futuro house from him two years ago, so they already know that he also has a Venturo house. He sold the Futuro for $280,000, the report said.
In early 2020, McQuoid also bought two McDonald's retro climbing jails: one each from Dunedin and Christchurch.
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What is a Venturo house?
Venturo is a brainchild of Finnish architect Matti Suuronen who came up with the idea of this prefabricated house design in 1971. The Venturo was typically constructed using light plastic with metal and wood frame, and acrylic glass.
The top and walls of a Venturo house are made of double-layer fiberglass filled and two-inch thick polyurethane foam. The floors, on the other hand, were made of insulated beams of marine grade plywood. Venturo weighs about 4 tons and measures 45sqm or about 485 square feet.
Prior to designing Venturo, Suuronen has already made a name for himself in the late 60s thanks to his other creation: the Futuro house--a house that resembles a flying saucer. The Futuro was displayed in London at the 1968 Finfocus export fair.
Venturo houses were marketed as a bungalow or recreational house, but some were used as shops, gas stations, and retail kiosks. A license to manufacture Venturo was sold to 23 companies across the globe, and some were thought to have been produced in Japan and Finland. In the UK, the sole recipient of the license was Waterside Plastics in West Yorkshire.
Venturo House forms part of Suuronen's Casa Finlandia series that features plastic buildings and includes the CF-1008/200 service station, the CF-45 building, and the CF-10 kiosk. Venturo's success, however, was short-lived when the oil crisis hit and caused the rise in the price of plastic, according to venturohouse.com.
According to The Guardian, the first example of space-age architecture is the House of the Future - an envisioned home from 30 years into the future - that was displayed at Disneyland in 1957. The four-winged house sat atop an elevated pedestal with a landscaped garden, waterfall, and a pond.