Back to the Future

The future turned out more banal than promised. Epoch-defining advancements in telecommunications and computer processing, staggering investments in physical and digital infrastructure, and untold billions of hours of human labor have culminated in yet another tedious Zoom conference call made from the kitchen table. Today, technologies that enable people on opposite sides of the globe to meet and collaborate are often met with yawning and vague disgruntlement. Sure, during the early days of the pandemic, the sheer novelty of the video call gave rise to amusing viral videos of cats jumping in front of politicians’ webcams and corporate executives inadvertently revealing pajama bottoms below their suit jackets; but the telecommute has, in a few short years, by and large been merely integrated into existing habits and mindsets.

It was not always so. In the late 1970s, as Steve Wozniak developed the first personal computer, the Apple II, the future seemed far more interesting. “Image mobility will replace physical movement,” gushed architect and designer Doug Michels in 1978. “People will travel around the world with the speed of light.” A user of one of these new computers would only have to command her computer and, “via satellite, instantly, you will talk to and see Australia.” Now, this encomium would make most white-collar workers inwardly groan. But for Michels and partners Richard Jost and Alexandra Morphett, of the Houston-based design studio Universal Technology (1978-80), the possibilities that personal computing opened up were dazzling. “We look to the cool blue radiance of the cathode ray tube as an extension of the human spirit, the precision of technology as a monument to human ingenuity.”

Michels, who had been a member of the avant-garde art collective Ant Farm through much of the previous decade, was writing to his first client, a Houston investment banker and computer hobbyist who envisioned a dedicated room for his first-generation Apple II, a sound system, and a projector. Although the technology for telecommuting was just barely developing—IBM would begin allowing a handful of employees to work from home the following year—E. Rudge Allen Jr. wanted to be prepared.

The result was a cross between a home office and the bridge of the Starship Enterprise. All walls were upholstered in pleated gray velvet, and doorways and windows were given rounded corners, like portals on a ship. Hidden lights around the base of the room created a futuristic yet intimate atmosphere. And in the center of the room, aimed towards a wall-mounted projection screen, sat a bizarre horseshoe-shaped piece of furniture, the computer console, the centerpiece of the design. At the flat back end of the console was an elevated stainless-steel platform with a white laminate desk. A computer and other electronic systems could be placed here, where Allen could sit at helm, commanding from his Saarinen-designed Tulip chair. The front of the console formed a plush sofa, where members of the family could sit while watching movies or playing video games.

The overall effect of the room was an image of computer technology that was sleek and functional but also comfortable and domestic. Although Michels insisted on the cool blue-gray tones over his client’s preference for warmer colors, the room’s plush tactility successfully humanized computers by drawing on the familiar modernist aesthetics of Star Trek and Saarinen from the decades before.

The project was published in magazines ranging from Newsweek to Playboy and, during its brief moment in the spotlight, contributed to an international conversation about the future of telecommuting. Universal Technology received inquiries from corporate manufacturers in New York, Tokyo, and Riyadh, asking if the product could be mass-produced. The firm briefly entertained the idea of developing a cheaper model of the “Teleportation Unit” that would retrofit garages, predicting that telecommuting would supplant physical travel and the need for household automobiles altogether. These plans never came to fruition, and the Allen Teleport remains an eccentric footnote.

After Allen’s death, his family donated the room to the University of Houston’s College of Architecture and Design, where it was opened in 2000 as a multimedia room. The architecture remains substantially the same (although the new space lacks any windows), but the computer systems were updated to meet the requirements of the Web 1.0 internet. Michels, who taught at the college, continued to be involved with the installation, designing a new vestibule connecting the multimedia room to the college’s atrium. A quarter-century later, it remains in use, but it undoubtedly remains more of a curiosity than a vital institution.

As an icon of the now-present future, the Allen Teleport confronts us with the unresolved problems of “futuristic” design styles. The aesthetics, although charming and comfortable, are undeniably dated, a relic of older, equally dated, visions of the future. The giddy excitement that Michels and Allen had for the future of telecommunications technology has not survived into the 2020s, even as their dreams for widespread telecommuting have been partially realized. Students at the college are much more likely to make video calls from phones or laptops perched precariously on messy studio desks than from the Teleport downstairs. When the world is as digitally connected as it is today, the notion of a dedicated room for video calls seems quaint.

And yet, just as Michels looked to the recent past for inspiration, perhaps we should not be too quick to dismiss the Teleport as we learn to design in the future he anticipated. Although the internet has increased our ability to talk with anyone around the world, people are lonelier than ever, and emerging technologies like AI and virtual or augmented reality are viewed with increasing distrust. So much of the digital revolution has worked to isolate users; employees can now work remotely and mealtime often devolves into individuals staring at their phones, symptoms of an atomized, divided society. But the Teleport suggests, gently, that these technologies don’t have to separate us. The graceful, curved sofa not only allows its users to look at the screen but also brings them together. Far from being outdated, the Teleport presents us a yet-unrealized future where designers have humanized new technologies, so that they augment and improve the well-being of their users rather than make them more depressed and anxious. That’s a future worth working toward.