As the city of Los Angeles began to climb the hills that surround it, the myth of the semi-prefabricated single-family home simply deposited on horizontal terrain began to fade. The hillsides posed construction problems, but, in return, offered breathtaking views over the spectacle of the world's most sprawling urban settlement.

John Lautner does not belong to the new generation of Californian architects coming out of the Venice school. On the contrary: he trained in Frank Lloyd Wright's studio and participated -with his own hands- in the construction of Taliesin West, the school-shelter that Wright installed in the middle of the desert. Once independent, he moved to California and since then has devoted himself mainly to designing houses around Los Angeles. Surely one of the most famous is still the Malin House (1960), also known as 'Chemosphere': a kind of flying saucer supported by a single central pillar and that takes full advantage of the vastness of the surrounding landscape...[+]