ARCHITECTURE : Mundane Concerns Compromise Visionary Chemosphere House

Some say it came from Mars; others think it is left over from some movie set; yet others think it’s a fire tower. The Chemosphere House is none of these things, though it has been in a few movies.

The house is in fact an attempt by architect John Lautner to show how you can put more than 2,000 square (or round) feet of living space on a 45-degree slope without pouring massive amounts of concrete. You simply build a 30-foot-high concrete pole anchored deep into bedrock, spread a single floor out on top and sit back to enjoy the views. You are up above it all, lifted into a science fiction world of open space that reminds you of nothing like home.

Lautner has long been known as an innovative designer who combines a clear understanding of how things really stand up with a great deal of bravura (see last week’s column on the Sheets Apartments). The 1961 Chemosphere House is the most condensed, singular statement of his ideals.

The idea of putting a house up on a single stilt is, however, not really new. Buckminster Fuller, the man who gave us the geodesic dome, proposed a “Dymaxion House” for the open landscape of the prairie back in 1929. The Dymaxion House was supposed to stand up tall in the flat fields, concentrating all the technology it takes to live, shooting it up to a new-found land in the sky and spreading it out into a series of flexible rooms.

Lautner has taken that idea and put it on a hill, so that the house loses its sense of standing out like a monolith in the field. Instead, it becomes like a modern bird-watching pavilion for a rich bachelor.

It is indeed a bachelor pad (currently for sale for a little under $2 million) that is all about the image of being by yourself, completely open and free.

Unfortunately, Lautner’s vision has been compromised by some rather mundane concerns. The main room in the house is a big sweep of space anchored by a raised conversation pit with a slightly incongruous brick fireplace. It offers you probably the most dramatic panorama of the eastern Valley ever unveiled.

However, the other half of the structure, which consists of two rather small bedrooms, a study, two bathrooms and an open kitchen, is crammed into the back of the house. The demand of making separate rooms seems at odds with the elegant structure, which consists of laminated wood beams reaching up from the polygonal base to meet at an octagonal skylight. The whole space wants to be just one domed platform, a loft in the sky, not a slice of tract home crammed into an unaccommodating structure.

The house is really a one-liner: Let’s put a house up on a stilt. You get the idea immediately just by looking at it. Seeing its metal plates gleaming in the sun from down in the canyon, rising up along the column and its spreading struts, or standing in the living room watching space expand endlessly all around, you understand how the building was made. You get that exhilarating sense of freedom offered by an architecture that concentrates on harnessing the forces of nature, transforming them into something that still looks absolutely modern. Too bad reality sets in, and you soon start to worry about where to hang your hat.

Aaron Betsky teaches and writes about architecture.