UFO house didn’t make it to utopia, but it’s very cosy
● The rumour was that it had flown back home — a fibreglass house in the shape of an unidentified flying object that disappeared from the Eastern Cape three years ago.
In fact, Port Alfred’s famous spaceship house has landed in France, as an art installation in a field overlooking Le Havre.
The 8t fibreglass house, one of just two “Futuro” homes built in SA in the early 1970s, was a tourist attraction in Port Alfred, particularly when it first appeared as a seaside home for a retired couple.
It subsequently changed hands several times and fell into disrepair, only occasionally occupied by tenants such as Sandi de Clercq and her then boyfriend.
“It was very cosy, very nice, especially for a couple,” De Clercq said. “It would attract a lot of visitors over holidays. All of a sudden you would look up and there would be all these Vaalies taking pictures.”
Later the couple opted for more conventional accommodation, partly due to thieves stealing the plumbing, but they were disappointed when the house disappeared.
The complete story of Port Alfred’s UFO house emerged this week when British artist Craig Barnes issued a Facebook request for information about the unusual home he bought in 2015.
By that stage Barnes already knew it well, having visited several times with his SA-born parents. “Every time we went to Port Alfred we would go and look at the spaceship house — it was part of a culture tour we would have to do every time we went back there. It became ingrained in my psyche,” Barnes said from London this week.
So much so that Barnes bought it, partly because he feared it might be destroyed. “When I visited with my wife [in 2015] there were some workers knocking down the brick garage adjacent to it and I panicked and got the fear they would destroy it. One thing led to another and I found myself with an 8t fibreglass house.”
Why did he do it? Barnes is still not quite sure. “It captured the zeitgeist of that time, of utopian optimistic ideals, ideas about society and technology,” he said, adding that he set about transforming it into a livable space that was simultaneously a work of art.
After shipping it to the UK, Barnes spent about a year turning his dream into reality. The Futuro house has since made two rooftop landings, at Matt’s Gallery and Central Saint Martins, before a trip across the channel to star at the Le Havre summer festival.
“The initial cost was dwarfed by the eventual cost of shipping it, which in turn was dwarfed by the eventual cost of restoring it. I had to remortgage my home to complete the job,” he said.
Barnes is now on a mission to track down as much information about his Futuro and the 65 others reportedly still in existence.
Designed by Finnish architect Matti Suuronen in the 1960s, they never took off as a popular form of accommodation and now survive only as reminders of a more starryeyed past.