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.
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