Sunday, December 31, 2000		Article

HOUSE OF GATES THAT BILL BUILT

OUTSIDE of Mount Rainier and the Space Needle, Seattle's most famous landmark is simply called "The House." The term refers to the extravaganza of a structure in which Bill Gates lives and holds court.

Most frequently compared to press mogul William Randolph Hearst's mountaintop Xanudu, Gate's $50 million, 40,000 square foot home sprawls across a hillside near where Route 520 leaps east across Lake Washington not far from the Seattle Sheraton where the Interactive Newspapers conference is taking place.

Built with the staggering profits Microsoft and Gates have harvested from the world's personal computer users, the ultra high-tech structure is only easily visible to boaters who can approach it from the water. Other than that, its mostly only the glitziest celebrities, heads of state, and industrial moguls who get to actually tramp around the place. And "awesome" is the word they most frequently use to describe it.

Buying in

To thank the 100 biggest donors to United Way last year, Gates offered to host a reception at The House. Was it coincidence that the charity received double the amount of $25,000 contributions? "There were people who gave $15,000 or $20,000 last year and said, 'Hey, for another $5,000 I can go to Bill Gates' house,'" a fund-raiser told the Seattle Times. The event became so large it was postponed until spring so that the party could spill out onto the lawn.

What are these people getting to view? Imagine a rustic home, not a log cabin but something that blends in with the forest, and then blow air into it so it expands into a panorama of cut stone and massive wood beams on so many levels that two home elevators are needed to access it all. "Once you get past the sheer scale of it, it represents Northwest character and feel," said Paul Schell, who toured the house many times as the head of the University of Washington Architecture department.

Take the virtual tour

If we decided to drive to The House, we'd first notice the newsletters about The House in the neighbours' mailboxes. Gates tried to be as courteous as possible during the seven years of construction. That included use of an electric-powered construction crane on rails, to minimise noise. Meanwhile, the army of workers was bused to the site every day to minimise traffic. Gate even had the nearby street cleaned and swept each day.

But the $50 million it took to build the house was hardly spent on public relations, although labour must have cost a pretty penny. At one point in 1993, reportedly 23 construction trailers were clustered around the site, some double stacked.

Want to take a peek at the house? Let's take a virtual paper tour and see what all those construction workers did. Drive past the guard house, and also look out for the guest house, administration building and caretaker's home.

Bill's custom forest

Before parking the car in the 30-car underground garage, check out the forest on the way up. It wasn't there before Bill took over. In fact, the fast growing alders were planted and the ground was sprinkled with forest "duff" -- that's nature-speak for forest floor debris that includes seeds. "It will reach climax in 50 years," architect Jim Culter told Metropolitan Home. "A hundred years from now, there will be no trace that we changed anything on the site."

There's mulled apple cider waiting for us in the reception area that has room for more than 100 people, but why linger there. We're given a pin that reminds us of a name tag. That pin will tell every gadget in the various rooms what we're listening to, watching or the sort of lighting we most prefer.

In other words, no longer does Bill have to wait till the commercials during Seinfeld to get some water. With this pin, Seinfeld will follow him to the kitchen. And when his daughter grows up and starts listening to obnoxious music, that music will follow her from room to room, and Mom and Dad will never have to hear it. The concept works the same for lights. The lights will dim and shut off as you leave a room and get increasing brighter as you approach a room.

Amazingly, the sophisticated electronics do not stand out on their own but are blended into the architecture. "It doesn't need to assert itself, and Bill doesn't want to see gadgets," Culter said.

An underwater music system

Our tour includes a look at: the 60-foot-long indoor pool with underwater music system, boulder-rimmed hot tub, two elevators, rotunda topped library filled with Gates' rare book collection, 20-person movie theater, trampoline room, massage room, an arcade and a 24-screen video wall.

Walk outside and almost a quarter of the 450 feet shoreline is taken up by man-made wetlands. Want to fish? The man-made estuary is stocked with salmon.

As for the building material itself, Culter used a half a million board feet from old lumber company work sheds. Some sheds were more than a quarter mile long, according to a Seattle Post-Intelligencer story. He also used Douglas fir beams that measured more than 75 feet in length.