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LATEST VERSION OF THIS PAGE | LATEST SITE UPDATE LIST | THE NEW HOMEPAGE
UPDATED 091812 | ADDED 100211 | WANLI, TAIWAN | RETURN TO THE MAIN FUTURO HOUSE ARTICLE | RETURN HOME
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Tingtão Rd, Wanli District, New Taipei City, Taiwan 207 | 25°11'13.90"N 121°41'10.25"E
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Google Maps | Satellite Imagery Date 121110
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Video & Additional Images
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Notes, History & Resources
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Update 091812
Peggie Scott took an awesome series of photos of Wanli during the period between 221108 and 141208. With Peggie's permission a few of these photos are displayed below; you can check out the complete set on Flickr. 
Update 091512 This video by vikilintw uploaded to YouTube 111111 features some stills but also some live footage of Wanli. picturenarrative posted a new set of photos of Wanli to Flickr. The photos were taken 010912; that is the latest confirmation for this site at this time. Original Video & Images 100211 This video by murapo47 was uploaded July 2nd 2011. The video is a montage of nice stills of the complex at Wanli and confirms that as at 2011 the complex remains in the same abandoned state that it has been in for some time. The following are a few more shots from the beautiful collection if images of Wanli by cypherone [CC 2.0]. You can see more of this great collection of images on flickr. 
Additional Images:
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Update 091512
A new set of photos of Wanli by picturenarrative make the latest confirmed date I have for this site 010912. After a further look at some of the many photos taken at Wanli I believe it is possible to positively identify the building which houses the "hidden" Futuro despite the fact that it cannot be seen in Google Maps or Google Earth. The image below shows Wanli from Google Maps. The superimposed photo is this one from the great set of photos by city tales. From that photo we see that we looking towards the ocean and the "hidden" Futuro. We also see a Venturo on the left of the picture and another Futuro to the right. The "hidden" Futuro is located in a rectangular building. There is only one place on the site where such a photo could have been taken and the position is roughly indicated by the arrow at the bottom right of the image below. 
Christopher M Collins recounts a little history he was able to uncover on the Wanli site in an article titled Formosan Futuro Village that can be found on ezinearticles.com. Collins visited Wanli and during the course of the visit he talked with several people about the site. Collins recounts his findings along with his impressions of Wanli in his ezine article. It seems that One Mr. Su Ming, a Taiwanese businessman, was responsible for Wanli. A man with military background and an entrepreneurial spirit Ming made his money in part with, of all things, Sarsaparilla soda. Of this perhaps unlikely venture Collins says: " In its beginning days, it wasn't very popular with the local's taste buds and got off to a slow start. However, with the American establishment of military bases in Taiwan as a post for the great East Asia, western tastes for both culture and foods began to develop in the country. Along with this, Mr. Su Ming's carbonated beverage sales exploded and he established a new factory, becoming a new rich member of high society." Ming began to look for investment opportunities so he could increase his new found wealth further and he decided that there was a market for upscale vacation homes. Determining that water sports and beach front living would be the draw his property needed Ming purchased a picturesque beach front property on the north coast of Taiwan. Ming then proceeded to "populate" the property with "futuristic" Venturos and Futuros. Priced for the very wealthy, around $94,000 in today's money, movement on the units was slow and Ming's investors eventually lost interest leaving the project unfunded. The local property manager explained to Collins that the issue was not that investors could not afford the units but that they were wealthy enough to vacation in much more exotic locations around the world and were not sufficiently interested in simple beach vacations at home. Another local who provided some insight into Wanli's history said that in actual fact the site Ming had chosen was perhaps not as well thought out as it could have been. She said that the area was subject to extremes of weather with the summers being long and unbearably hot and the winter's bringing very high winds and crashing cold seas. She indicated that the site had been vacant for some 20 - 20 years. One of the most intriguing things about the article is some of the detail that Collins recounts. Despite the length of time the site has been abandoned he says that: "I did venture into a few of the homes that weren't barricaded with wooden pole and barbed wire locks for a better look. I found Japanese influenced tatami rooms, twin beds with sheets still on them, and even toothbrushes alongside a bottle of head and shoulders shampoo in one bathroom." Some of the photographs of Wanli show such detail and to be honest make it look as though some of the units are still inhabited; check out these two images from the superb set by Peggie Scott:
I see toothbrushes, tissues, towels, bed sheets [exactly what Collins reported] and all sorts of evidence of "habitation" but every visitor to the site seems to report that the site is uninhabited and abandoned. Intriguing! Check out Christopher M Collins' article here; it makes for an interesting read. Original Information 100211 Though there a few examples of two Futuros located on a single site [Kvistgård, Carlisle, Huntsbury] almost all of the remaining Futuros are located one to a site. The one major exception is Wanli in New Tapai City on the Northern coast of Taiwan where there are no fewer than 13 Futuros along with a much larger number of Venturos. Though this is the largest concentration of Futuros known there appears to be no information on the web [at least none that I can find] about how or why the complex came to be built, what its purpose was [the most common theory is a collection of holiday homes] or how it ended up in the deserted and abandoned state it is now in. The complex at Wanli is usually credited as containing 12 Futuros and the following screen shot from Google Maps clearly shows the 12. However there is documented evidence of there actually being at least 13 Futuros on site with one being "built in" to another building and covered with a conventional roof which makes it impossible to identify [at least to me so far] on Google Maps; whichever building it is in it is clearly not one of the 12 identified on the image below so I believe the count for Wanli is 13 as a minimum. The "hidden" Futuro can be clearly seen in the two images below from the stunning set by Peggie Scott. 
The latest dated imagery for the Wanli complex does not have a specific date; the video is simply dated 2011 but that is the latest confirmed imagery I have so 2011 is the confirmed date for Wanli. Sources & Reference:
Got new, updated or corrected information or an image I could use?
I am always looking for additional information, history, details, images, videos; just about anything Futuro I guess - if you would like to contribute please use the Futuro Contact Form at the bottom of the main article or email me. As far as images go I am particularly interested in those that are either significantly better than the ones already on this page or show a different aspect or detail. If you own an image meeting one or both of those criteria I would love to be able to use it on this page but I will simply provide a link if that is your preference. Where permission is granted to use an image on the page appropriate attribution will be provided by means of a link to the original image, a link to a website of your choosing or both. |
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