Looking at this flying saucer of a house, you might think that the designer was a little off his rocker — but when John Lautner designed the Chemosphere in 1960, his goals were actually perfectly reasonable. He saw that there was a lot of land outside his home in Los Angeles that was undeveloped, because it was on slopes considered too steep for construction. Rising to the challenge, he found an engineer, Leonard Malin, who owned some of that “worthless” land, and was determined to live there. The land was a 45 degree slope that was subject to heavy rains and California earthquakes, but using an innovative concrete and steel support beam, Lautner designed a home that could not only handle the hill, but survive everything nature threw at it.
Lautner had commercial visions for his Chemosphere — he thought that when the previously worthless hilly land suddenly became open to development, there would be a rush to build many more structures like it, from which residents could live within easy range of the Lost Angeles lights, but stay above its noise and bustle.
Sadly, it was not to be. The flying saucer shape of the house put people off, as did its Dymaxion-esq one floor design. Despite featuring many amenities, appearing in popular culture and movies, and being critically acclaimed by other architects, it languished on the market for years, unsellable, and in the end, no more were built.
As a place to live, the Chemosphere was a great success. As a house, it was a failure. Would you buy a Chemosphere? If not, why not? What qualities are there you want in a home that it can’t give you? If you can answer that question, you’ll understand why the Chemosphere was not the house of the future — and have an inkling what the real thing will look like.
Leave a comment — and show us how you think of the buildings you live in.
Anyone who has studied science or been to Disney world has probably heard of Buckminster Fuller — inventor of the bucky ball, the geodesic dome, carbon fullerenes, and the phrase “spaceship earth.” In 1929, he saw that industrial devices were becoming steadily cheaper — cars, radios, and such labor-saving devices as washing machines and vacuum cleaners were becoming things that everyone could own. At the same time, houses were getting more expensive — and with the start of the Great Depression, were something not many people could afford. He was sure that he could invent a house that you could build in a factory and assemble on site, that everyone could afford, and that would be better and more comfortable then standard homes.
Of course, we know it didn’t work out, since we aren’t living in those homes today — but it didn’t fail for the reasons you might think.
To Fuller, the house of the future had to be, “Proof against fire and flood, tornado and earthquake, electrical storms and marauders. It must be proof against drudgery — that is, in it must be accessories such that the housewife can accomplish all her cleaning within fifteen minutes.” It had to be comfortable, affordable, of a reasonable size, resistant to damage and cheap to upkeep. And these were not idle statements — Fuller planned to sell these homes in the mid-west, and so they had to be strong enough to resist a tornado coming within a few hundred feet. He planned to sell them in California, so they had to withstand earthquakes. He planned to try to sell home-convenience in the middle of the depression, so they had to be the easiest home yet made.
His investors were a bit dubious about the need for “marauder” resistance however.
Fuller decided to accomplish this with a bit of clever engineering. The outside of the house would be a stainless steel shell, anchored to the ground, completely water tight, and strong enough to resist an earthquake or tornado. It would come to a point in the center, so that on hot days, the warm air would rise into the point and be pumped out of the house, and on cold days, the vents to the point could be closed, so there was less house to heat. All the utilities — electrical box, heater, and air conditioner — could be in a single utility room under the point, so that you could build them in a factory and drop them into the house on-site. It would be easy to upkeep because there would be no materials to rot or rust, and easy to clean because it was compact.
This was the result.
Not bad. Not bad at all. Looking the other way, we can see that the building wraps around, heading towards the kitchen:
Lots of room, a fireplace, plenty of windows — low upkeep and safe. It’s a little “cute” in its look, but far from ugly. So why did it bomb?
Because it didn’t feel like a home.
That was the start and the end of why the Dymaxion house belly-flopped when it should have swan-dived. No matter how the interior was arranged or what dividing walls were added, people felt like they were living in a one-room house. Even if the interior space was the same as that of a much larger, traditional house, people looked at it and said that it looked small. The all-steel construction left people making comparisons to “living in a grain silo.” And perhaps most importantly, it was the cheapest house ever made.
Which meant that if you bought it, you were admitting that you were poor.
Kids don’t want “age appropriate” knockoffs of their older siblings toys, teenagers don’t want near-beer, food lovers don’t want instant meals, and young couples don’t want “special” houses. They want the houses their parents had, that they grew up in. Things they can look at and feel proud of. For most, getting a knockoff doesn’t just mean you’re getting something worse — it makes you feel like you couldn’t afford the real thing.
When Fuller made the Dymaxion house, he bragged, “My entire house can be fit in the back of a truck!” To which homeowners responded, “It comes in a truck? Like a trailer home?”
The Dymaxion house wasn’t the first “home of the future” to crash and burn — but there’s a reason it was the first one we chose for the blog. It didn’t fail because the designer was foolish, or arrogant, or over-optimistic, or obsessed with gadgets. It didn’t fail because it got too hot in the summer and too cold in the winter, or because of leaks, or noise, or looks. It failed because the designer saw a house as a machine, that does a job — and he focused on that job. Not on how the people living in the house saw it, and interacted with it.
We picked the Dymaxion house, because it serves as a warning — about why the content of this blog is important, and why the house of the future will not look like the house of the future.
The value of a washing machine is obvious to anyone who has ever had to do laundry — it’s one of the most ubiquitous labor saving devices, and arguably the most useful. Respected academics have claimed that the washing machine was the greatest invention of the industrial revolution, and it’s not hard to see why. People trying to pinch pennies may turn off the lights lights, turn down the heat, or even go without a car — but nobody washes their clothes by hand. There’s a number of arguments as to just how important the washing machine is — including one very entertaining video linked at the end of this post — but everyone can do the math.
Time to Wash a Load of Laundry by Hand:About 3 Hours Loads of Laundry:About 1 per Day (in a house with kids) Time Per Year Saved:Forty-Five Straight Days
Before the washing machine, a woman doing her own family’s laundry would do an amount of work equiviliant to an 8 hour shift, every day, four months out of the year — not counting time spent heating water, carrying water, or buying cleaning supplies. For women with large families, the situation would be even worse. The invention of the washing machine freed these women from a backbreaking, monotonous, relentless job.
And that is how it created stay-at-home mothers. Because the key word there is job.
Before the washing machine, before labor saving devices, maintaining a house was a full time position. Women who stayed at home may have raised children, but they would not say that child rearing was what they did. What they did was washing, cleaning, cooking, and supplying, but also such tasks as inspecting the house for damage, arranging workmen (or getting the men in their family to work), and managing expenses. Even if sexism stopped it from being seen as “real work”, the woman of the house was kept just as busy as her husband, being fully responsible for the management of the home. Upper class women didn’t do the labor themselves — but they were still employed, directing servants, ensuring the upkeep of the grounds, and managing household money.
There was even a term for it. When an unmarried man bought a house, he would hire a “woman of all work,” who would upkeep the building, and even manage other servants, if he needed them.
But then came the washing machine. There were still many household tasks to see to, but in houses with this amazing new device, women had more free time. Girls did not have to help their mothers carry and heat water, and women could spend some time focused entirely on raising their kids — or pursuing their own hobbies. A trend that would continue, until today, when a woman who chooses to stay at home is assumed to be primarily focused on raising her children, or pursuing her own ideas. In 1912, the term “stay at home mother” would have made as much sense as “stay at work employee” — keeping a house fit to live in was a job, and it took a hard working person all day, every day, to do it. Now, women have a choice, and so we need that distinction.
And this is how it all comes back to houses. The washing machine created the stay-at-home mother because it turned a house from a place of labor, in which people happen to live, into a place to live, where some labor happens to occur. Even if it would be too expensive, we can imagine a house where the laundry is done at the laundromat, food is ordered out, and the repairs are done by professionals — a house where the residents do almost no physical labor in the house. Before the washing machine this would have been absurd, ridiculous — a house was a place of work as much as any factory. Now, a house is a place to live, it’s just easier to do some work inside.
We still have some other ideas about how a house works, of course — more then just “a place to live”. For young people and students, making the transition from renting an apartment to renting a house can be an important step in their lives, signaling maturity. Moving into a house can be a sign of financial stability, a sign that we’ve “made it,” or something a couple does to seal a marriage and settle down. Buying a house can be an investment, or just something we do because we need a place that’s “ours.” These are all ideas about how a house works as unspoken and obvious to us, as the idea that a house is a place of labor would have been to someone in 1912. We don’t really talk about them, because we don’t need too — that’s just how things are.
But, there’s no reason things will always be that way.
If you enjoyed this article, leave a comment about ways you think of a home beyond “a place to live.” Be it a sign of stability, a place to run your home business from, or something that’s been in the family you don’t want to part with. We’d love to do a spotlight on one of our readers, and how you relate to the buildings you live in.
Recent Comments