Bill Gates William Henry Gates III (born October 28, 1955) is an American business magnate and philanthropist. He is a co-founder of Microsoft, along with his late childhood friend Paul Allen. During his career at Microsoft, Gates held the positions ...

designed and owns a mansion that overlooks Lake Washington in

Medina Medina,, ', "the radiant city"; or , ', (), "the city" officially Al Madinah Al Munawwarah (, , Turkish: Medine-i Münevvere) and also commonly simplified as Madīnah or Madinah (, ), is the second-holiest city in Islam, and the capital of the ...

Washington Washington commonly refers to: * Washington (state), United States * Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States ** A metonym for the federal government of the United States ** Washington metropolitan area, the metropolitan area centered o ...

. The mansion incorporates technology in its design. In 2009,

property tax A property tax or millage rate is an ad valorem tax on the value of a property.In the OECD classification scheme, tax on property includes "taxes on immovable property or net wealth, taxes on the change of ownership of property through inhe ...

es were reported to be US$1.063 million on a total assessed value of US$147.5 million.

Design and features

The house was designed collaboratively by

Bohlin Cywinski Jackson Bohlin Cywinski Jackson is a United States-based architectural practice that was founded in 1965 in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania by Peter Bohlin and Richard Powell. Bohlin's firm then merged with John F. Larkin and Bernard Cywinski's Philadelphia ...

and Cutler-Anderson Architects of

Bainbridge Island Bainbridge Island is a city and island in Kitsap County, Washington. It is located in Puget Sound. The population was 23,025 at the 2010 census and an estimated 25,298 in 2019, making Bainbridge Island the second largest city in Kitsap County. ...

, Washington. The mansion is a modern design in the Pacific lodge style, with classic features such as a private library with a dome-shaped roof and oculus. The house features an estate-wide server system, a swimming pool with an underwater music system, a gym, and a dining room.

In popular culture

The house was made fun of in ''

Dilbert ''Dilbert'' is an American comic strip written and illustrated by Scott Adams, first published on April 16, 1989. It is known for its satirical office humor about a white-collar, micromanaged office with engineer Dilbert as the title charact ...

'' in January 1997 when the lead character was forced to become a towel boy after his failure to read an

end-user license agreement An end-user license agreement or EULA () is a legal contract between a software supplier and a customer or end-user, generally made available to the customer via a retailer acting as an intermediary. A EULA specifies in detail the rights and rest ...

over purchased

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washin ...

software. Some online news articles call the house Xanadu 2.0, a reference to the motion picture '' Citizen Kane,'' which was itself a reference to the opening lines of

Samuel Taylor Coleridge Samuel Taylor Coleridge (; 21 October 177225 July 1834) was an English poet, literary critic, philosopher, and theologian who, with his friend William Wordsworth, was a founder of the Romantic Movement in England and a member of the Lake ...

's classic poem

Kubla Khan ''Kubla Khan'' () is a poem written by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, completed in 1797 and published in 1816. It is sometimes given the subtitles "A Vision in a Dream" and "A Fragment." According to Coleridge's preface to ''Kubla Khan'', the poem ...

. The name Xanadu 2.0 is an example of " citogenesis".

References

External links

Tax info on the house from the King County GIS website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Bill Gates' House House Gates family residences Houses in King County, Washington Houses in Washington (state)