Bill Gates' house

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Bill Gates' house is a huge earth-sheltered mansion in the side of a hill overlooking Lake Washington in Medina, Washington (47°37'40N, 122°14'34W). The house is noted for its modern design and the sophisticated apparatuses it contains.

1 General
2 Features
3 Construction
4 See also
5 References
6 External links

[edit] General

The Gates home is a modern design in the "Pacific lodge" style, with classic features such as a large private library and a domed reading room. The house occupies 50,000 square feet (4,600 m²) on a 5.15 acre (2.1 ha) lot. Garage space and outbuildings may occupy an additional 16,000 square feet. Property records indicate eight bedrooms and four building levels. According to King County public records, as of 2005, the total assessed value of the property (land and house) is $125 million, and the annual property tax is $990,000.^[1]

The lot was purchased in December 1988 for $2 million, and construction occurred over a period of seven years with nominal completion in 1995. The house is located on the east end of the lot, which is located on a hill.

Gates often entertains the rich and powerful at his home. Once when Bill Gates had a private party for the National Governors Association at the house, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security announced a "temporary security zone" around Gates' Lake Washington home which locked down all of Lake Washington south of the Highway 520 bridge and stayed in effect for two days. ^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Features

Electronics are used abundantly; visitors are surveyed upon entrance and are given a microchip that sends signals throughout the house to adjust temperature and other conditions according to preset user preferences.
A 17 × 60 foot (5.1 × 18.2 metre) swimming pool. It contains an underwater music system and a fossil-motif floor. There is also a glass wall which can be dived under in order to emerge outdoors, by a terrace. A locker room off the pool has four showers and two baths.^[2]
Each door handle in the home is custom made on a CNC machine to specifications laid out by Mr. Gates. Each handle (2 per door) cost approximately $2000.

[edit] Construction

The primary color of the house is red.
The house was designed by James Cutler of James Cutler Architects and the architectural firm Bohlin Cywinski Jackson (BCJ).
At one point there were 300 workers working on the house, including 104 electricians.^{[citation needed]}
PDL was the lead designer on the project.
An interior designer, Thierry Despont disagreed with the layout of a portion of the home which resulted in demolition and the removal of 60 cubic yards of cured, cast-in-place concrete.
An existing cedar tree was determined by Gates to be in the wrong location and moved 6 inches.
Construction took 7 years^[3]