Ahwatukee House of the Future (1980-1984)

It was envisioned as a "shining home of dreams", an "experimental living laboratory and testing ground", a "magnificent prism of Man's dreams" where the ideas of tomorrow are experienced today.  

In practice, it ended up being a three dollar tourist attraction. 

Completed in 1979 for a cost of $1,200,000, the Ahwatukee House of the Future was the brainchild of real-estate developer and Ahwatukee village founder Randall Presley. 

Conceived as an attraction to generate interest in the relatively new Phoenix, Arizona suburb, Presley approached the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation with the vision of an idealized futuristic home that would wow visitors while also maximizing efficiency in a harsh desert climate.

Elevation sketches.

Floor plan.

Charles Robert Schiffner, of Taliesin Associated Architects, served as project architect for the striking pyramidal edifice, which looks something like the star-child offspring of a mid-century modern church and an inter-dimensional spacecraft.

Solar panels and copper roofing, which has since turned green after years of exposure.

The interior is centered around a spacious atrium with multiple skylights strategically placed to maximize natural lighting throughout the day. The traditional living room is replaced with a "conversation pit", a 1950's modernist innovation intended to facilitate interpersonal communication, that by the late 70's was still viewed by suburbia as a novelty. 

Pit shmit--let's watch The Love Boat!

Employing an open design, there are no hallways to sequester adjoining rooms from view, and sliding glass panels replace traditional interior doors.

Study and bedroom under glass.

To efficiently keep the environment cool in the hot Phoenix desert, living spaces are below ground level, and a bank of solar panels, unusual in private residences of the day, powers the hot water heater.

Now maybe you're thinking that a conversation pit and solar panels aren't all that futuristic?

Meet Tuke.

Pronounced tu-kee, (as in Ahwatukee), Tuke is the name of the ten interconnected Motorola microprocessors that monitor and control all aspects of the house. The system, which cost approximately $30,000 (although Motorola engineers predicted the price of a comparable system would drop to only $5,000 in a few years), monitors windows and doors, adjusts blinds, controls temperature, and logs energy use for later analysis.

Terminals located in the sitting room, kitchen, and master bedroom allow human beings to interact with Tuke to store and retrieve messages, recipes, and bank account information (the system doesn't connect to the Internet or any other external network.)

"Tuke, look up the recipe for stuffed bell peppers. Then delete it."

Did I mention Tuke talks and can entertain children with spoken jokes and nursery rhymes? Tuke's speaking voice is very similar to the voice synthesizer from 1983's War Games.

Of course, no House of the Future would be complete without a phalanx of robot security guards patrolling the grounds. But we'll have to settle for security cameras, motion detector lights, and a keyless entry system that requires entering a personal code into a calculator-style keypad.

Can my code be 58008?

Now, you may be concerned that an intelligent, computer-controlled house might try to kill you someday after determining you are an inefficiency, or perhaps, after hours of spying on you in the shower, fall in love with and attempt to impregnate you.

Don't worry-- Charles E. Thompson, Motorola's VP of World Marketing , has anticipated your concerns, and assures us, in a somewhat humorous interview ("The Tenant is in Complete Control", InfoWorld Magazine, June 1980), that human beings will remain "in complete control of the environment...making all the important decisions".  Rumors that Tuke will lock you in the house and slowly cook you over several hours by aiming its solar panels at you are highly exaggerated.

The House, which opened to the public from 1980 to 1984, hosting approximately 250,000 visitors at $3 a pop before being sold as a private residence, was notable enough to be featured on the television show That's Incredible and in Volume 3 of its companion book.

Here are a few current photos of the house, followed by the That's Incredible book article in its entirety.

Rite of Passage: Fast Times at Ridgemont High

Back in fifth grade (1983), I had a wealthy friend I'll call "Ed." Well, I just assumed he was wealthy. See, he had multiple video game systems (both an Atari 2600 AND a Colecovision!), multiple action-figure franchise playsets (both a Star Wars Dagobah Action Playset AND a Masters of the Universe Castle Grayskull!), a waterbed, a swimming pool with hot-tub.... so, you tell me.

Do the math, people.

Further affirming his relative affluence was the strange little box that appeared one day atop his massive, wood-paneled television. A pay-TV box. Pandora's box. 

For illustrative purposes only. I can't remember what cable system Ed actually had. (image source)

Cable TV was a relatively new phenomenon in my Phoenix suburb. Who would pay for television when there were already a dozen channels you can watch for free over the air? 

Rich folks, that's who.

There was ON-TV, a scrambled signal broadcast over a UHF channel, which you could watch for free if you didn't mind that wide, vertical stripe wriggling down the middle of the picture like a stretch of bad road.  

Baseball, I think?

There were also these things called HBO and Showtime, cable channels that played movies, "uncut and unedited".  My parents explained this meant they left in all the cursing and nudity.

The bad parts. 

All the best movies (Star Wars, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Raiders of the Lost Ark, The Rescuers, etc.) didn't have any bad parts to cut, so I still didn't quite get the appeal of this whole pay-TV thing.

But it wasn't long before I began to appreciate the forbidden fruits of Ed's little set-top genie, the first being this crazy channel called MTV, where, as Ed explained, you "watch the radio"... against often provocative imagery.

This ain't your grandparents' television! Literally.

Videos by ZZ Top ("Gimme All Your Lovin'"), Duran Duran ("Girls On Film"), and even Elton John ("I'm Still Standing") demanded our absolute prurient attention when they popped out of the video jukebox, their suggestive images so fleeting that we couldn't quite absorb what we were seeing in real-time, their perceived explicitness magnified later in our imaginations.

One morning, my wealthy friend Ed arrived breathlessly at school in his tuxedo and top hat with exciting news: Fast Times At Ridgemont High, the Amy Heckerling-directed high-school sex comedy whose trailer had caught our eye the year prior, was going to be on cable that Saturday night. 

At this point I had never seen an unedited R-rated movie, the closest thing to a "teen sex comedy" I'd ever seen was, I guess, Grease (1978), (which doesn't count at all), and the only "full-frontal" scenes I could reference were shadowy glimpses of that unfortunate "Summer girl" from the opening scene of Jaws (1975).

A sleepover at Ed's was immediately scheduled.

Complications. The cable was only wired to the living room television set, and Ed's parents were planning to watch the film. With all the bad parts we were anticipating in Fast Times... there was no chance we would be allowed to view it with them (besides, that would be kind of... erm, awkward). 

Instead, we would have to watch surreptitiously from the neighboring rec-room, two rooms adjacent.

Simulated vantage point of the family television for our Fast Times at Ridgemont High viewing adventure (recreated using a frame from Strange Brew, 1983.)

We would have to be on high alert throughout the 93-minute run time. If Ed's parents caught us sneaking a peek, we'd be banished to his room for the night. This meant ducking out of view whenever Mom or Dad went to the adjoining kitchen for a snack.

And that's how I first saw Fast Times At Ridgemont High, squinting long distance from around a corner, over two shoulders and between two heads.  Achievement unlocked.

At fifth grade, my impressions of high-school were informed entirely by pop culture (My Bodyguard [1980], mostly.) Fast Times... would end up completely recalibrating those expectations, and it became my model for what high school would be like. 

Of course, reality would later shatter a lot of these expectations, but that was years away.

Some of the life-lessons learned by Fast Times...:

1. Sex is everywhere

The kids are thinking about, talking about it, doing it, talking about doing it, trying to do it, practicing it, and decorating their living spaces with it. Even the designated "nerd" character, Mark Ratner (Brian Backer) has sex thrown at him (in an awkward scene with Jennifer Jason Leigh's Stacy Hamilton). That teenagers are openly, unapologetically preoccupied with sex should perhaps be filed under "Well, Duh", but this was quite the revelation to fifth-grade me. 

2. Parents are nowhere

Ridgemont exists in an alternate reality where the only adults are teachers and fast-food restaurant managers. Parents are nowhere to be found, and seem to have very little involvement in their children's daily lives. Even in the few scenes where parents are present, they are usually off-screen. 

For example, Jeff Spicoli's (Sean Penn) tortured younger brother Curtis shouts for his off-screen Dad, who we never actually see. Stacy (Leigh) talks briefly with Mike Damone's (Robert Romanus) Mom on the phone, also never seen. The only parent with any screen-time is Stacy's mom, briefly appearing for a few seconds to obliviously tuck her fully dressed daughter in to bed, only for Stacy to immediately sneak out the window for a rendezvous with an older man (see lesson #1). 

Even when confronting serious matters like being fired from work, getting in a car accident, or having to deal with an unplanned pregnancy, the parents are never involved.

These teenagers were managing their personal lives completely without adult influence or supervision. 

3. Work is serious

"I will serve no fries before their time."

When we are introduced to Brad Hamilton (Judge Reinhold) working at All American Burger, the first thing he does is dump a basket of fries into the garbage. He's decided they were sitting out too long and no longer acceptable to serve. No manager tells him to do this. He knows his job, takes pride in his work, and has made the assessment, entirely on his own.

This, to me, was remarkable. It's just a crappy fast-food job... and yet, he cares.

Later while training the new hire, Arnold (Scott Thomson), he asks about the secret sauce recipe at Arnold's former employer, Bronco Burger, because he's actually interested. "Ketchup and mayonnaise. Gotcha". I imagine he files that bit of captured industry intelligence away in some notebook.

This may just be a short-term, minimum wage fast-food job, but its HIS job, and he treats it with the seriousness of any other professional trying to build a career or master a craft.

Stacy (Leigh) and Linda Barrett (Phoebe Cates) work at Perry's Pizza in the mall. Unlike Brad, they don't see their job as a career and are just hanging in there season to season, but they too take their job seriously and are never seen goofing around at work or acting unprofessionally.

Business, it seems, is serious business.  

4. Bullying is apparently no longer a big deal

My previous high-school pop-culture model being 1980's My Bodyguard, I was relieved to discover that bullying was so-o-o-o two years ago. The stoners and geeks and athletes and cheerleaders and skaters of Ridgemont all seemed to be co-existing without shoving heads in toilets or extorting each other's lunch money. 

There are a few brief shots of first-day-of-school hazing (one kid gets toilet-papered like a mummy) but it feels more like a good-natured rule-breaking prank than targeted cruelty. 

And finally...

5. Phoenix is one-up on Ridgemont!

We may not have a beach, but at least we have cable!

Well, the rich* among us do, anyway.

(*Ed, it turns out, was not actually wealthy, he just had a few different toys than I did.)

This is Phoenix! Real Life (1979)

I'm going to take a break from taking a break from posting about scary stuff (it HAS been awhile since my last post....ahem) to tell you about one of my favorite comedies of all time, which was not only set and filmed in 70's-era Phoenix, Arizona where I grew up, but also made some startling predictions about how technology would change filmmaking, and how unscripted "reality" programming would become a viable entertainment format.

It's the 1979 pseudo-documentary Real Life. Written and directed by Albert Brooks (Finding Nemo, Taxi Driver, Drive), and starring Brooks as a fictionalized version of himself, Real Life is essentially an early "found footage" film in which we view the results of a failed attempt to document a year in the life of a typical American family.

Today, this is such a commonplace premise it hardly needs further explanation, but back in '79 the idea that cameras capturing the typical everyday interactions of regular people in their homes, warts and all, would be a source of entertainment, and perhaps provide insight into the human condition, was a pretty radical concept.

The Yeager Family of Phoenix (portrayed by Charles Grodin and Frances Lee McCain as the parents, with a son and daughter), are the lucky family chosen for the project, beating out hundreds of other applicants in a grueling (and hilarious) screening process, which involves interviews, psychological evaluations, and embarrassing role-playing exercises (which, as Brooks notes dryly, "single-handedly discouraged 23 families from further participation.")

This occurs not at a Hollywood studio casting call, but at the "National Institute of Human Behavior" in Boulder, Colorado, in order to lend the project, which Brooks is convinced has important sociological and scientific merit, an air of legitimacy.

This is where the film makes some remarkable predictions about the future of filmmaking technology. First, as part of the screening process, candidates have their face scanned into a computer model in order to evaluate their "screen presence" at any angle.

That's right--in 1979, Brooks predicted digital face scanning and pre-visualization on a computer.

Although the actual result resembles the greatest Vectrex game never made.

On top of that, Real Life purports to be the first movie photographed with DIGITAL CAMERAS. In an effort to be as unobtrusive to their subjects as possible, a "whole new generation of motion picture equipment" is developed specifically for this project: The Ettinauer 2-26 XL, from Holland.

Not only is the camera worn over the head (supposedly for ergonomic considerations, but it also has the hilarious effect of making the cameramen look like alien visitors)...

...but all images and sound are captured digitally, on printed circuit-boards, which are swapped out when filled to capacity and later transferred to traditional film.

It's important to note that in 1979 this was, frankly, impossible, and the introduction of these cameras steers the film into the science-fiction genre.

Despite Brooks' initial enthusiasm, things get off to a rocky start when the Yeagers' on-camera family dinner debut begins in uncomfortable silence and collapses into a loud argument that sends the children to their room while Mrs. Yeager complains about her menstrual cramps.

Mr. Yeager, meanwhile, can't disguise his discomfort being filmed, repeatedly looking at the cameras and issuing apologies for his family's behavior.

Brooks, for his part, can't seem to stay off-camera or out of the Yeagers' lives. He moves into the house directly across the street and is constantly popping in, involving himself in their family drama, and trying to steer the Yeagers' behavior with offers of a big screen TV or football tickets if they'll "open up".

A few weeks into the shoot, word of the project leaks to local media thanks to an article in The Arizona Republic, and the Yeagers are soon hounded by news cameras on the street and at their home (including a reporter from KPHO TV 5).

"Nightmare In the Desert: The Phoenix Experiment". Sensational article appears to have been doctored into an actual copy of The Arizona Republic next to a story on winter tourists a.k.a. "snowbirds". A flyer advertising the Heard Museum is visible on the table.

Between the stress of constant filming, the local media attention, and Brooks' overbearing personality, the entire family eventually shuts down...

...prompting Brooks to turn up at their door, unannounced, in clown makeup, in an ill-conceived plan to cheer them up so they'll be more interesting subjects for his movie.

Finally the Yeagers have had enough and announce they want to quit the project entirely. Brooks, realizing that two months in Phoenix is a movie without an ending, goes into some kind of severe emotional meltdown. Hoping to salvage the film by emulating the spectacle of big budget blockbusters like Gone With the Wind or Jaws, he provides his own dramatic climax by setting their house on fire.

To give you an idea of how novel the concept of filming "reality" for entertainment was at the time, we need merely observe the depiction of the old-guard studio head reluctantly funding the project, Martin Brand (Jennings Lang), who can't distinguish between what Brooks is doing and "the God-damned news", and repeatedly implores Brooks to cast James Caan, Neil Diamond, or some other big name as a next-door neighbor or housekeeper, to give audiences a reason to tune in.

We get to see a lot of Phoenix locations and landmarks during the course of the film (although I suspect at least some of it was filmed elsewhere) including long lost amusement park Legend City, the Phoenix Zoo, Goldwaters department store (owned by... yes, THOSE Goldwaters!) and the downtown area, as well as some local media institutions like The Arizona Republic newspaper, and TV stations KPHO and KAET, and radio station KDKB.

Here's some pics, and if any fellow Zonies want to help identify some of the locations or share your memories, please elucidate us in the comments section!

1.1 - Downtown Phoenix
The Wyndham Hotel (building with the half-circle windows) and Hyatt (with rotating restaurant The Compass Room on top)

1.2 - Downtown Phoenix
The Hotel Luhrs

1.3 - Downtown Phoenix

2.1 - Animal Hospital building

2.2 - Arizona Veterinary Clinic, lobby
Supposedly the interior of the same building, but it could be another location.

2.3 - Arizona Veterinary Clinic, interior hallway

2.4 - Arizona Veterinary Clinic, interior office

3.1 - Goldwaters Department Store
I believe this was the Scottsdale Fashion Square location, although there were several in town.

4.1 - Papago Park
This appears to be somewhere in Papago Park, a range of distinct mountains near where The Phoenix Zoo and the Desert Botanical Garden are located.

5.1 - The Phoenix Zoo, entrance

5.2 - The Phoenix Zoo, elephant
Not sure if this is the famed painting elephant Ruby or not...(?)

5.3 - The Phoenix Zoo, giraffes

5.5 - The Phoenix Zoo, tortoises

6.1 - Log Flume Ride
I'm guessing this is The Log Jammer, a ride at Legend City, an amusement park that used to be located near Papago Park. Can anyone confirm?

Picture of Legend City Log Jammer for comparison:

7.1 - KPHO "Live Eye" Truck
Looks like this is somewhere downtown.

8.1 - KAET mobile van and KDKB truck
KAET is the local Public Broadcasting station, and rock radio station KDKB is following in a truck. This appears to be in a residential area somewhere.

9.1 - Mountain Neighborhood
I'm not sure what mountain this is, presented in the film as the Yeagers' neighborhood in the newer "fifth district".

10.1 - Elementary School
This school is identified as "Benjamin Franklin Grammar School", but I have no idea what school this actually is or if it is even in Phoenix.

11.1 - Soft Serve Ice Cream location
Reflection in the glass places it adjacent to someplace called "CAL Automotive". I have no other clues as to its identity or location.

12.1 - Dry Cleaners
A sign reads "Thank You Call Again".

13.1 - The Yeagers' and Albert Brooks' cul-de-sac
The Yeagers' house is at the end of a cul-de-sac and bears house number 10510. Albert Brooks took a house across the street with house number 10501. I'm not sure if this cul-de-sac is actually in Phoenix (the green trees visible in the undeveloped area at the end of the cul-de-sac don't look very "Phoenix" to me) but here are screen caps from four directions if any detectives want to try to find it.

UPDATE: Reader totallymorgan managed to track down the cul-de-sac at 10510 Laramie Pl., Los Angeles, CA. The houses have been remodeled a bit since the film but there are several identifying features that have survived, including the circular garden wall at the neighbors house which is still standing. Thanks totallymorgan!

14.1 - Movie Theater
Because this is a night scene its hard to make out any details identifying this movie theater entrance.

15.1 - Memorial Park
Finally there's this memorial park, site of a funeral scene. The mountains in the background might help locate it.