Posts Tagged microsoft

I am going to start a regular feature today concentrating on celebrity’s homes, after talking about Lenny Kravitz house being for sale I started looking at other famous peoples houses and was stunned by how brilliant some of them were. I’ll start it off today by looking at Bill Gates $200 million* geek pad.

The house is quite private and all interior pictures are private and copyrighted, I’m not going to break Microsoft copyright, fighting against Bill Gates is not good… However there are exterior shots of the house available

It is absolutely massive with the residence taking up 66,000 square feet of land, this means that the house can include 7 bedrooms, 24 bathrooms, six kitchens and six fireplaces! Why anyone has 6 kitchens I have no idea, one for each style of cooking? Chinese style kitchen, Indian style etc. Most of the house is actually built into the side of the hill so it is a  lot bigger than it looks from the aerial photographs. This along with lots of other parts of the build such as recycled wood being used and very eco sensitive lighting, mean the house is very eco friendly, especially for one that relies on technology so much. Bill Gates is obviously concerned about global warming as well as everyone else (and with his power I’m sure he can help lots!)

The house has a 17 x 60 foot swimming pool that has an underwater music system (err..what!) and swimmers can swim under a glass wall to be in either the indoor or outdoor part of the pool. The house also has a Theatre, Library, Formal dining room, exercise room including sauna, steam room, men and women’s lockers and a tramp0line room. A reception hall that has a 150 person capacity for entertaining and a 63 foot high grand staircase or a lift depending on how you want to move about the home.

Of course being the Microsoft owners house you expect it to be full to the brim of lovely technology goodness, and boy he doesn’t fail there. When you enter the house you are given a microchip pin to wear and this sends signals throughout the home and all the rooms presets for individual people will come up automatically when you go throughout the house. So each room would change the setting of the AC dependent on who was in it and amazingly all the art in the house is digital and will change to the users preference when they are there!

The floors are also pressure sensitive so that any resident or any member of the security team knows exactly how many people are in the house and exactly where they are. His kids must not be able to get away with anything! and lastly to continue the eco friendly theme lights automatically come on and more importantly go off as you walk around the house, so not more fumbling for switches in the dark and tripping over furniture.

Here is a little video that is a digital tour of the house to show you some more information

* In 2005 anyway