Bill Gates House

Bill Gates's house is a large earth-sheltered mansion in the side of a hill overlooking Lake Washington in Medina, Washington. The house is noted for its design and the technology it incorporates. It is nicknamed Xanadu 2.0

The Bill Gates family lives in the exclusive suburb of Medina, Washington, in a huge earth-sheltered home in the side of a hill overlooking Lake Washington.

Billionaire Bill Gates home is a very modern 21st century house in the "Pacific lodge" style, with advanced electronic systems everywhere. In one respect though it is more like an 18th or 19th century mansion: it has a large private library with a domed reading room. While it does have a classic flavour, the home has many unique qualities.

Lights would automatically come on when you came home. Speakers would be hidden beneath the wallpaper to allow music to follow you from room to room. Portable touch pads would control everything from the TV sets to the temperature and the lights, which would brighten or dim to fit the occasion or to match the outdoor light.

Visitors to Bill Gates House are surveyed and given a microchip upon entrance. This small chip sends signals throughout the house, and a given room's temperature and other conditions will change according to preset user preferences. According to King County public records, as of 2002, the total assessed value of the property (land and house) is $113 million, and the annual property tax is just over $1 million.

According to the National Association of Home Builders, the median American house size is slightly more than 2,000 square feet. Microsoft founder William Gates III house is more than 30 times that size.

Bill Gates Mansion satellite view from Google Maps

Bill Gates House Aerial view from MSN Virtual Earth

There has been lot of speculation that the home of Bill Gates on Lake Washington was designed on a Macintosh. Pictures of the Gates' complex are both private and copyrighted, so in order to see what this place really looks like you need to go to BCJ's website. Following the "residential menu" click on the forward arrow key at the bottom of the pictures to advance to the house entitled, "Guest House and Garage, Medina, Washington".

USNews.com provides an interactive tour of Bill Gates home that covers the Pool building, Exercise facilites, Library, Theater, Formal dining room. Microsoft's own Seattle Sidewalk site has a birds-eye view of the project under construction. (Medina Washington project)

It took seven years to build the 40,000-square-foot Bill Gates mansion on a wooded five-acre compound in the moneyed Seattle suburb of Medina. [Bill Gates House Address: 1835 73rd Ave NE, Medina, WA 98039 map - arial photo] Much of the Bill Gates house is built underground into the hill, so the house looks smaller than it actually is. Unfortunately the hidden section underground did not escape the taxman's view; Bill paid over a million dollars last year on property taxes.

Earlier, Bill Gates organized a private party at his waterfront mansion. 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. Gates' homestead is approximately 48,000 square feet with a garage that reportedly accommodates 30 cars.

The architects who designed Bill Gates' famous residential compound in Washington were James Cutler Architects and the architectural firm Bohlin Cywinski Jackson (BCJ).

Inside Bill Gates' Garage, you'll find a 1999 Porsche 911 Convertible and 1988 Porsche 959 Coupe. Steven Ballmer drives a 1998 Lincoln Continental. In fact, due to the 959’s questionable emissions and unknown crash ratings, it took a federal law signed by President Clinton for Bill Gates to legally drive his 959 on American roads.

Read this interview with James Cutler, FAIA, the best-known architect of Northwest Style and the designer of the Bill and Melinda Gates residence on Lake Washington near Seattle. Firm: Anderson Cutler Architects (formerly James Cutler Architects), on Bainbridge Island, off the Seattle coast.

Source: wikipedia, Google