UFO-Shaped Futuro House Lists in California for $1.495 Million

A UFO-shaped Futuro house in Idyllwild, California, is on the market for $1.495 million — one of fewer than 100 Futuros ever built. Finnish architect Matti Suuronen designed the prefabricated dwelling in the late 1960s as a portable ski cabin that could be flown by helicopter to remote sites.

Desert Sotheby's International Realty holds the listing. The owners are historic preservationist and former Obama administration appointee Milford Wayne Donaldson and his wife, Laurie Donaldson. The house, known as the Donaldson Futuro, sits on the National Register of Historic Places.

What are the hard numbers?

The specification is short and precise:

• 73.7 square meters (793 square feet) of interior space
• approximately 8 meters in diameter, 4 meters in height
• approximately 5,398 kg in weight
• a 0.23-hectare site in the San Jacinto Mountains

Suuronen built the Futuro from fiberglass-reinforced polyester plastic (a moldable composite shell) with polyurethane insulation (a foam layer that traps heat). The concept required only four concrete piers as foundations. The dwelling could be bolted together from modular components on-site, then dismantled, reassembled or airlifted elsewhere — a structure intended to heat quickly in cold climates.

The elliptical yellow shell, circular windows and aircraft-style entrance mark a moment when space exploration and new synthetic materials pushed designers toward radically different ways of living.

Why did the Futuro fail the first time?

The design never achieved its industrial promise. Its unconventional appearance and plastic construction met resistance from some communities. Zoning restrictions and financing difficulties added friction. The 1973 oil crisis then drove up the cost of synthetic materials, undermining the economic logic of plastic architecture, according to the structure's published history.

Fewer than 100 were built. A portable retreat meant to be mass-produced became a limited architectural experiment instead, with survivors now valued for rarity and cultural significance.

What does this change for the buyer?

The Donaldson Futuro has undergone extensive restoration and retains the integrity of its original 1969 design, materials and workmanship. That's the practical question for anyone writing a check: what does $1.5 million actually buy? Not a replicable prefab, but a registered artifact — a transportable dwelling that has become a fixed, carefully preserved one.

The listing exposes the tension at the core of Suuronen's proposition. Conceived to occupy a range of landscapes, the house now derives its value from staying exactly where it is. Its price shows how architectural experiments that miss mass adoption can acquire a different kind of value through scarcity, preservation and historical recognition — a benchmark other surviving Space Age prefabs may soon test.