Text 3. The Plastic House for Tomorrow

Match the following words and translations.

Young architects from the architectural department of the Rhode Island School of Design are dreaming up tomorrow’s houses today.

One such house was designed with the help of research material by a graduate of this school. The system is based on cast plastic bubbles linked together, and it permits the creation of almost any size and shape of house. The walls will be giant curved sandwiches, with rigid plastic as outside surfaces and foamed plastic between to act as insulation.

This house will embody the features that are associating more and more with modern living; one-floor living, and a long, low line that makes it blend with its surroundings. The huge glass areas will admit lots of light, and will also tend to add outdoor space to the indoors and increase the feeling of speciousness.

Another house is a beautiful example of what engineers like to call ‘blue sky thinking’. Its skeleton is a coil of magnesium alloy covered by a vapour barrier and a sprayed coat of concrete, and the floor is concrete. If glass were desired, it could be set between the coils of the frame. The entire structure would rest on pieces of curved precast masonry.

Wild thinking? On the contrary. According to its designer, the spiral framework would be compressed, just like a spring, for shipment to the site. Once there it is expanded, braced with welded pieces between coils, and the skin is applied. Thus would be solved the problem of manufacturing large pieces of house that are still transportable.

Other ideas come to mind. If a family has become larger and wishes to enlarge the house it might hire a pair of bulldozers and stretch their house out to more opulent dimensions.