No Nails, No Lumber: The Bubble Houses of Wallace Neff

169 Pages·2011·19 MB·English

by  Jeffrey Head

The Bubble Houses
of Wallace Neff
Jeffrey Head
Princeton ArchitecturAl Press · new York

Build thee more stately mansions, o my soul,
As the swift seasons roll!
leave thy low-vaulted past!
let each new temple, nobler than the last,
shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast,
till thou at last art free,
leaving thine outgrown shell by life’s unresting sea!
—
from “Chambered Nautilus,” by Oliver Wendell Holmes,
1858, found among Wallace Neff’s personal notes and
a primary source of inspiration for his development of
bubble house architecture
sea shells have influenced the designs to some extent
as they are one of the most nearly permanent and
durable structures for living things. Developed by nature
throughout the centuries to withstand tremendous
pressures and hazards of the sea, these shapes offer
mankind protection from natural destructive forces as
well as new man-made forces.
—
Wallace Neff, undated
previous, page 2
A double-bubble house, 1942
previous, page 4
wallace neff, in front of the
first completed Airform house in
Falls church, Virginia
Published by Library of Congress
Princeton architectural Press Cataloging-in-Publication data
37 east 7th Street
New york, Ny 10003 Head, Jeffrey.
No nails, no lumber : the bubble houses of Wallace Neff /
for a free catalog of books, call 1-800-722-6657 by Jeffrey Head. — 1st ed.
Visit our website at www.papress.com p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
© 2011 Princeton architectural Press ISBN 978-1-61689-024-7 (alk. paper)
all rights reserved 1. Neff, Wallace, 1895–1982—Criticism and interpretation.
Printed and bound in China 2. Concrete houses. I. Title. II. Title: Bubble houses of
14 13 12 11 4 3 2 1 first edition Wallace Neff.
Na737.N37H43 2011
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any 720.92—dc23
manner without written permission from the publisher, 2011022740
except in the context of reviews.
every reasonable attempt has been made to identify
owners of copyright. errors or omissions will be corrected
in subsequent editions.
editor: dan Simon
designer: Paul Wagner
Special thanks to: Bree anne apperley, Sara Bader,
Nicola Bednarek Brower, Janet Behning, fannie Bushin,
Carina Cha, Tom Cho, Penny (yuen Pik) Chu,
russell fernandez, Jan Haux, felipe Hoyos, Linda Lee,
Jennifer Lippert, John Myers, Katharine Myers,
Margaret rogalski, andrew Stepanian, Joseph Weston,
and deb Wood of Princeton architectural Press
—Kevin C. Lippert, publisher
frontispiece: excerpt from “The Chambered Nautilus,” is
reprinted from The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell
Holmes by Oliver Wendell Holmes (Boston: Houghton,
Mifflin), 1895.
Contents
8 foreword, Steve roden
13 Introduction
The Bubble Houses (USA)
34 falls Church, Virginia
42 Litchfield Park, arizona
52 Loyola University, California
54 Pacific Linen Supply Co., California
60 The andrew Neff House, California
68 South Pasadena, California
72 Hobe Sound, florida
Airforms Around the World
86 Latin america
104 europe
114 africa
122 asia
Appendices
127 a – Interview: former Bubble House residents
137 B – Patents of Wallace Neff
146 C – Selected Unbuilt airform Projects, 1944–1958
158 afterword
160 acknowledgments
162 Notes
165 Selected Bibliography
168 Image Credits
F oreword
steve Roden
the oVAl hA s lAnDeD
One turns onto a small residential street and is confronted with
a house that looks nothing like a house. The fact that it has a
front door and a few visible windows only adds to its incongru-
ous presence amidst the traditional 1930s homes that comprise
most of the neighborhood. Looking at the house, which resembles
a smooth mound of earth, it feels as if some ancient space station
has suddenly fallen from the sky; and upon landing, it has mys-
teriously embedded itself into the wrong context, its presence so
strange it seems to have traveled through both space and time.
Sixty plus years after it arrived, no one can deny that this dome,
with its oval footprint, still retains a tremendously uncanny pres-
ence: it looks like it could be a home...but is it?
hAnDForms, mAnForms, AnD AirForms
Standing in the central living room of Wallace Neff’s last remain-
ing bubble house, one can see that the inside of the dome is hardly
perfect. In bright light one can see its inconsistent surface, which
8
has no resemblance to anything made by a machine. The surface
of the dome, as seen from the inside, looks like it were modeled
by hand, although in truth it was formed by air. This interior sur-
face is decidedly human; in certain daylight hours it feels less like
a cover, and more like an opening. While the house feels bogged
down on the outside, it feels soft as an atmosphere on the inside.
in PrAise oF shADows
On cloudy days its interior remains a bit dark; I assume that the
lack of windows has something to do with the structural necessi-
ties of the shell. Nevertheless, light penetrates the windows and
doors in wonderfully mysterious ways. The curved interior and
freestanding walls allow refracted beams of light to enter the
house, projecting abstract shadows that move across a variety of
interior surfaces. as sunlight bounces images off of passing cars
and sprinkler sprays, the light and its accompanying shadows
resemble some of Hans richter’s abstract films of the 1920s. Like
insects, these images appear randomly at all times of the day, and
generally in a variety of locations. at night the films also appear,
projected via headlights, creating colored, flickering presences,
as if Neff had hidden a series of Victorian magic lanterns in the
garden.
BreAthForms
after living in the bubble house for a few years, I began to think
about how the interior space was truly formed of air, how Neff’s
genius had allowed air to become a sculptor. as much as I had
been fascinated with the humble qualities of the dome’s inner
surface, I began to think about the house in relation to breath.
Several years later, I generated a sculpture and sound installa-
tion entirely wrought from my own breath, related to the bubble
houses that Neff built in Litchfield Park, arizona, in collaboration
with the Goodyear Company. The installation attests to the poten-
tial effects a house can have on its inhabitants, which are not only
related to aspects of inspired living, but also to inspired making.
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