The Mushroom House

December 9, 2003 11:24 AM

The Mushroom House in Whistler, Canada, is the result of 22 years of work by artist/creator Zube. "The interior design is based on the anatomy of a tree. All aspects of the décor reflect this motif, from the womblike hues of the Jacuzzi room in the 'roots' to the vivid leaf greens on the walls in the 'canopy'." [Via Boing Boing.]
posted by homunculus (29 comments total)

Must be nice to have all that money...
posted by LoopSouth at 11:30 AM on December 9, 2003

Here's a bit about the construction.
posted by homunculus at 11:35 AM on December 9, 2003

mmm.. good link. i caught this one about a year ago via the always wonderful caterina.net
posted by specialk420 at 11:36 AM on December 9, 2003

I would love it as a vacation/get-away house. If they don't find any buyers, I'm sure they'd make a fortune renting it out to wealthy vacationers.
posted by widdershins at 11:48 AM on December 9, 2003

[this is good]
posted by plep at 11:53 AM on December 9, 2003

Yeah, the images of the House are truly beautiful - once you past the clichéd and cumbersome flash nav. Bookmark this site as a good example of the medium obscuring the message.
posted by quadog at 12:13 PM on December 9, 2003

quadog, I alway choose the HTML versions when offered just for that reason. Annoying overuse of flash just pisses me off.
posted by HTuttle at 12:23 PM on December 9, 2003

You can have the rest of the house, I just want to live in that sauna.
posted by fletchmuy at 12:30 PM on December 9, 2003

Not my style but I appreciate the craft. Projects like this leave me flat though when encountering things like dishwashers and refrigerators.

(Ditto on the flash version.)
posted by Dick Paris at 1:03 PM on December 9, 2003

I wonder how annoying that place would be to live in after a while - if you'd start craving bland colors and straight lines.
posted by gottabefunky at 1:09 PM on December 9, 2003

The house is beautiful, but damn the copywriting is overwraught (and I agree, the flash is just dumb).
posted by me3dia at 1:15 PM on December 9, 2003

Did anyone see a price? I may have just missed it in the overwhelming awe and desire I felt. I want it, I want it, I want it! (I'm sure I can't afford it...but damn...I want it!)
posted by dejah420 at 1:25 PM on December 9, 2003

dejah - in that link that homonculus gave farther up, there was a comment that the minimum bid to be even considered should be $5 mil. Better off building your own.
posted by starvingartist at 1:49 PM on December 9, 2003

Wait, if it's based on the anatomy of a tree, why is it called the mushroom house?

::goes to site, clicks around.

Ah.
posted by freebird at 2:19 PM on December 9, 2003

God, that's tacky.
posted by Samsonov14 at 2:42 PM on December 9, 2003

Starving...yeah, I saw that after my post. It's cool...but it's not 5 mill worth of cool. Then again, I'd be hard pressed to find many things that were 5 mill worth of cool. ;)
posted by dejah420 at 3:23 PM on December 9, 2003

Doesn't Sid or Marty Kroft have a hippy home like that, based on the semiotics of HR PufnStuf
posted by mecran01 at 4:01 PM on December 9, 2003

It's worth noting that the "red spots" on the HTML pages link to QuickTime VR (?) movies that let you do 360 pans around the home. If you activate "hot spots", you can then go from VR room to VR room. Very, very, excessively cool.
posted by five fresh fish at 6:32 PM on December 9, 2003

Having taken a good look around, I've decided this house would be a bugger to clean.

On the other hand, anyone with $5M to toss at a house can probably afford a cleaning service.
posted by five fresh fish at 6:36 PM on December 9, 2003

I was waiting for this to show up here, [via boingboing] of course.

My prefab comment, shrinkwrapped for your convenience : I used to live next door to that place. There's also the 'hobbit house' in Emerald Estates in Whistler. I had some of my more transcendant chemical experiences there, no coincidentally. A lovely place - the area, if not the house.

I can't remember if it was this one or the hobbit house was the one that burned quite badly about 10 or 11 years back.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 7:14 PM on December 9, 2003

stavrosthewonderchicken: according to the site it's the same place: "As the home took shape, fascinated onlookers dubbed it The Hobbit House, Bedrock, and finally, The Mushroom House."
posted by Gamecat at 7:36 PM on December 9, 2003

It follows closely the design principles laid down by Dr. Seuss.
posted by SPrintF at 8:16 PM on December 9, 2003

That's one funky house indeed. Cool link homunculus!
posted by madamjujujive at 10:41 PM on December 9, 2003

Very beautiful, but for $5 million you could build about a thousand roundhouses.
posted by ceiriog at 12:07 AM on December 10, 2003

It's interesting -- it's both wonderful and also too much -- can something be beautiful and tacky at the same time? Even assuming one had the money to buy it, it'd feel almost claustrophobically precious to live in every day. But yes, as a vacation place or weekend retreat, I'd find its appealing qualties (that sauna, those views, the whole funkiness of the thing) inviting enough. Like a really talented, eccentric, self-involved person who is great to have dinner with but you couldn't imagine being married to.

Oh, yeah, and that flash nav is a textbook example of pointless complexity.
posted by BT at 4:27 AM on December 10, 2003

Hmm. Well, I'm pretty sure there was another house in this style somewhere else in Whistler.

...'course I coulda hallucinated that.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 5:13 AM on December 10, 2003

Does anybody else think this house looks like it came out of Myst universe? Particularly the forests and natives' houses in Riven. Very nice.
posted by adzuki at 6:48 AM on December 10, 2003

Home for Life in Stourport-on-Severn, Worcestershire, is the result of a college project to design a child's bed by artist Roger Dean. "The living spaces created by Dean are the result of years of research that has given him a rare insight into how the human psyche relates to interior spaces. The curvilinear shapes don't just look good, they feel good!" [Via SE :]
posted by kliuless at 5:15 PM on December 10, 2003

Dean's designs are great. Here's a previous thread on Home for Life.
posted by homunculus at 5:44 PM on December 10, 2003