BEFORE the Wired LivingHome show house opened last week, with its 007-inspired techie gear and a 6-foot-long remote-controlled toy airplane tethered to the ceiling, there was the rotating living room at Hollywood Life magazine's Young Hollywood Home.
And the suspended swing in the master suite of the Beverly Hills Garden & Design Showcase at Greystone Mansion.
And the putting green balcony at Esquire North in Manhattan, the bedroom designed for a French bulldog at Metropolitan Home's showplace in the Hollywood Hills, even the solar-paneled, bamboo-floored Project 7ten green home co-sponsored by The Times and open for touring last month in Venice.
For better or worse, designer show houses have proliferated across the country -- and particularly here in Southern California.
"It's like a repeat of the 1950s," says Beatriz Colomina, a professor of architecture at Princeton University who has written about the importance of these "idea homes" as places for design experimentation.
"Museum model homes and case study homes were immensely popular back then, and they have always been an integral part of forwarding design discourse. The fact that they're coming back is a good thing."
Living vicariously, she says, is certainly part of the appeal.
"The one thing we can all relate to is a home," Colomina says. "Getting a glimpse of how others might live exercises an incredible fascination in all of us."
Unlike some of the more established productions such as the 44-year-old Pasadena Showcase House of Design and the 35-year-old Kips Bay Decorator Show House in Manhattan, these new show houses are no longer only for show.
"The velvet-rope concept of 'look but don't touch' is giving way to a more interactive approach," says Stephen Jacoby, associate publisher of Esquire, one of the magazines outside of the shelter category that has jumped into the show-house fray.
"The idea is to create an experiential environment where guests can really be a part of what's going on," he says. "They can sit on the Armani Casa sofa, feel the sheets on the Calvin Klein bed. And that's really what advertisers want to help seduce someone to buy their product."
Product, indeed, is key. New show houses are often unabashed vehicles for brand marketing and image building. As the number of such projects grows, sponsors and designers are clearly upping the innovation ante.
