Bill Gates's house

Bill Gates designed and owns a mansion that is on Lake Washington in Medina, Washington. In 2009, property taxes were reported to be US$1.063 million on a total assessed value of US$147.5 million.

Design

The house was designed collaboratively by Bohlin Cywinski Jackson and Cutler-Anderson Architects of Bainbridge Island, 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. There are six kitchens and 24 bathrooms, ten of which contain bathtubs.

In popular culture

The house was made fun of in Dilbert in January 1997 when the lead character was forced to become a towel boy after his failure to read an end-user license agreement over purchased Microsoft software.
Some 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's classic poem Kubla Khan.