FLORIDA FUTURISM

As we look at the architectural history of Florida, we see that many of the more unique, strange, custom, and innovative buildings that invoked different ways of living, or embodied different futures, have been demolished. The homogenization of building styles mirrors a loss of diversity in our ecosystems, as the natural and built environments move closer towards horrific uniformity. In designing “multi-use space for multi-species survival” we’ll revisit the height of Florida Futurism, when imagination and dreaming were taken seriously as design strategies. We’ll visit Where Dreams Come True. That's right, we’re going to Disney World! —specifically Epcot, the most significant monument to this moment in time when the confluence of the space-age and computer science was giving rise to (eco)systems thinking. Buckminster Fuller’s “Spaceship Earth” concepts mutated with Florida’s primary economic driver, tourism. Just outside of Epcot, we’ll time travel back to the now demolished Xanadu “Home of the Future” built by Roy Mason and Bob Masters, who tried to siphon some of the Epcot-visitors away and sell them on fully automated spray-foam homes. Down-state a bit, we’ll consider the Venus Project, which never reached its potential but perfectly encapsulated this moment in retro-futurism. 

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