You have much to answer for, Doris Day.

“What will the future be?” This question sometimes provides lively discussions in my classes.

I teach a course each summer term called Residential Technology. This is a how-to course about residential architecture. In one learning unit we break from discussions of building materials to historical and current trends in residential design. Students ask how houses of the future will look, be made, and affect the way we live.

“I don’t have a crystal ball,” I say. But when my students persist, I tell them that once, as a small boy of 8 or 9, I did see a glimpse of the future…a real house of the future .

It was a movie short called “House of the Future.” It showed a space-age dwelling inhabited by near clones of June and Ward Cleaver, and their young daughter, clone of Wally and the Beav. Life in the “House of the Future” was much like having lots of Staples’ Easy Buttons close at hand. Mom makes dinner for her family by pressing buttons on a console. Refrigerated shelves lower from the ceiling as sets of dinnerware rise from below the countertops. In other scenes, walls fold in upon themselves to create larger rooms, and unused furniture stows quickly out of sight. Low-angled camera shots of the exterior emphasized the dramatic cantilevered rooms jutting from a central core and the expansive windows strategically placed to substitute for outside walls. By current standards, it is an amazing building, but by the standards of its day, it had mind-boggling appeal. The film showed people in long lines waiting for a first hand look at the future, of how new materials and ways of living could change their lives.

“House of the Future” was a 1957 venture of Walt Disney Studios and the Monsanto Company, intended to showcase Disney’s collective creative genius and Monsanto’s construction-grade plastics. The structure itself was a popular attraction and stood for nearly a decade on the grounds of Disneyland in Anaheim, California. Later, it became the inspiration for the cartoon series, “The Jetsons.” Though the house of the future is gone, it still can be seen in on YouTube.com. I ask my students to watch it and to tell me which design materials and features from this concept house of a half century ago are available in houses constructed today. They quickly assemble their lists, but the lists are short. So, I ask them, if the brightest minds of 1957 thought that this was the way of the future, then why did so little of what is shown in the film come to pass?

In the ensuing silence, as the students ponder my question, I hear possibly one of the worst earworms of the last 50 years. It is chorus from one of 1957’s top songs. Over and over, inside my head, persistent and unstoppable Doris Day sings, “Que sera, sera, whatever will be, will be, the future’s not ours to see, que sera, sera ….”

Steve Patton has practiced architecture in the Piedmont Triad since 1985 and has been the Department Chair for GTCC's Architectural Technology Program since 1993.