MSI looks to past for futuristic green house
SMART HOME | New exhibit inspired by 1933 Century of Progress fair
What's brown and white and green all over?
The Smart Home, a $450,000, two-bedroom, two-bath eco-sensitive house that opens today at the Museum of Science and Industry.
(Keith Hale/Sun-Times)
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Smart Home
The 2,500-square foot structure, built on the east lawn of the museum, may be a 21st century creation -- what with its solar panel roof, shower tiles made of recycled wine bottles and ethanol-fueled fireplace. But its inspiration is 75 years old -- the Century of Progress fair that opened in Chicago in 1933.
At that South Side fair, a collection of homes offered then-futuristic amenities such as central air-conditioning, dishwashers and attached garages.
In looking for ways to mark the museum's 75th anniversary this year, Anne Rashford, the MSI's director of temporary exhibits, ran across reports of the fair homes. "That was the start of the idea,'' said Rashford.
Like those houses of yesteryear, today's Smart Home was largely pre-fabricated. Trucked from Indiana in five components, the new structure was pieced together in about eight weeks.
The sinks are made of a ground-up concrete, pulverized old toilets and fly ash, a byproduct of burning coal. Some of the floors are constructed of bamboo -- a wood that takes only three years to go from seed to lumber. One commode uses waste water from the sink.
Jetson-style devices include a bike that generates enough power to use the Wii video game device, and a wristwatch-like Sleeptracker Pro that monitors the user's sleep cycles. It gently wakes the person when they're most alert, reportedly allowing the wearer to wake up refreshed instead of groggy.
While green products makes the Smart House more expensive than a regular home at first, its cost-saving devices such as a reduced-power refrigerator and low-water shower heads reduces the overall monthly cost of operating the home, officials say. A typical Chicago bungalow would require $3,230 for energy annually; the Smart Home clocks in at $1,977 per year, said architect Michelle Kaufmann.
Standing under a dining room light that uses low-energy LED (jokingly nestled in a bowl of burned-out, old-fashioned incandescent bulbs), Kaufmann said, "We tried to get as much as we could out of every square inch" of the house.
Not that she expects someone to incorporate every green idea into every home. But some of the ideas can be added to existing houses, she said.
The three-story Smart House, which carries an additional admission, will be open to the public through Jan. 4, 2009.
