Designed by Wallace Neff for his brother Andrew, the Shell House is believed to be the last surviving example of the architect’s Airform construction system in the United States. Better known for designing homes for Hollywood figures including Judy Garland, Groucho Marx and Douglas Fairbanks, Neff developed the experimental building method in the years following the Second World War as a potential answer to housing shortages.
The process was simple in principle: a giant inflatable form was erected, covered with steel reinforcement and sprayed with concrete to create a continuous structural shell. The result was a series of dome-shaped houses that looked unlike anything else being built in postwar America. This one was built in 1947.
Set on a corner plot of almost 9,000 square feet in Pasadena, the two-bedroom house remains remarkably intact. Its curved concrete envelope encloses a circular living space arranged around a central fireplace, with adjoining rooms tucked beneath the sweeping dome. Recent restoration works have carefully preserved the building’s original character while adapting it for contemporary living.
A detached studio provides additional accommodation and workspace, while a rare Airform-built bomb shelter survives beneath the site. Together, they help preserve one of the most unusual chapters in 20th-century American residential architecture.
Now on the market for $1.95m, the Shell House offers the chance to live inside a surviving prototype of one of modernism’s most ambitious housing experiments.
