Treehugger has had several posts in the last month or so about the latest Disney Innoventions Dream Home - none of them good. The home opened on June 17, 2008 in Disneyland, and to many, it’s a far cry from a dream. This house of the future, at 5,000 square feet, contains, among other things (according to the “Fun Facts” page of the dream home website): 73 digital picture frames, a 100-inch digital screen in the Family Room, a solid cherry wood pirate ship in the son’s room (sustainable? Hmmm), a couple of robots, an LCD kitchen island, and a mirror that maps your body and lets you try on clothes virtually. Any guesses as to how much the fictional family who lives here spends on their energy bills? Yeah, I don’t want to know either.

The house of the future - at least for 0.1% of the world’s population who will, by the looks of it, own 98% of the wealth

From what I’ve read - I haven’t been to the home myself - the home makes zero concessions to the limitations on the way we live that we as human beings, and as Americans in particular, can no longer ignore. Even fashion magazines, car companies, and most ironically of all, oil companies are touting sustainability nowadays, however solid or empty the claims may be. So how is it that Disney so completely missed the boat? In the course of the company’s epic money-grasping of the past ten years or so, have the decision-makers lost the ability to even catch a glimpse of what’s real? Or - and this is much more frightening - do the majority of people actually LIKE this thing?

At this incredible, long-awaited moment, when environmentalism has made it into the mainstream, and is no longer a word associated solely with hippies and backpackers, the Disney Dream Home comes as a slap in the face. In the scheme of things, its impact will be little; yet, with such an opportunity to advance our growing awareness of what we’ve done to our planet, and what we must now do if we want to survive, how could a company with so much potential influence for good decide, instead, to take us backwards? Why not, instead of a 5,000 square foot house, build a 950 square foot home outfitted with all of the coolest small living pieces they could find? (And believe me, there is no shortage of cool small living home furnishings.)

First two pictures are Casulo mobile furniture; third is Matroshka. Pics courtesy of Treehugger.com

On a happier note, I’m glad to report that David Rakoff of the New York Times shared many of these concerns; he wrote an excellent article on his visit to the Dream Home called “The Future Knocks Again.” I’ve excerpted my favorite part below.

“‘The optimistic view of the future is, ‘we’ll solve these problems and we’ll learn to design around them,’ he [Tom Zofrea, one of the designers of the home] explained. Mr. Atkins put it differently: “We’re in Southern California — we think this way,” he said, spreading his hands wide. The Dream Home, therefore, exists in an unspecified time when the challenges of fossil fuels and sprawl have been vanquished, although how exactly is never mentioned.

In a strange coincidence, the very week that the Dream Home opened, at the other end of the Disney corporation’s spectrum, Pixar had just released the dystopian “Wall-E” — a film premised on a world choked by garbage and waste, and made uninhabitable, at least in part, by things like gargantuan homes that make little or no concession to the limited resources out there and our heedless lack of stewardship.”

I’ll never understand how the Dream Home is “optimistic.” Out of touch, arrogant, and ridiculously self-assured? Absolutely. My only hope is that it will make more people consider making conscious efforts to downsize their lifestyles - beginning with their living spaces.

Filed under: Charleston SC Green Living, I'On Group, Mixson, Morris Square, Urban Sustainability on July 11th, 2008