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Bill Gates designed and owns a 66,000-square-foot (6,100 m2)mansion that is on Lake Washington in Medina, Washington.[1] In 2009, property taxes were reported to be US$1.063 million on a total assessed value of US$147.5 million.[2]
The house was designed collaboratively by Bohlin Cywinski Jackson and Cutler-Anderson Architects of Bainbridge Island, Washington.[3][4][5] 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.[6][7] The house features an estate-wide server system, a 60-foot (18 m) swimming pool with an underwater music system, a 2,500-square-foot (230 m2) gym, and a 1,000-square-foot (93 m2) dining room.[8] There are six kitchens and 24 bathrooms, ten of which contain bathtubs.[9]
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.[10] 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.[11][12][13]