Rising out of the Hollywood Hills, John Lautner’s Chemosphere residence features a nineteen-foot diameter column foundation buried deep into the hillside. The column supports an octogonal platformed residence constructed of steel and wood and buttressed by eight metal beams. The Southern California Gas Company sponsored the heat in exchange for using the house in its advertisements, while the Chemseal company provided space age manufacturing technology normally reserved for the aerospace industry. Symbolically, the Chemosphere reflects a national obsession with the space age during the 1960s, as well as the desire that manufacturing companies had to combine natural resources with synthetic products to support a futuristic aesthetic geared towards American progress in the midst of the Cold War.