Modernism as not just an artistic movement but as a social transformation took off when an intellectual and artistic avant-garde embraced industrial mass production and advances in technology after the First World War. This was a surprise, a true U-turn: Before 1910, artists in particular were almost perfectly defined by exalting the work of human hands and despising the machine-made. Cubist painters and Dadaist provocateurs then opened the way for turnabout that even at the Bauhaus took until the winter of 1923 -24 to fully prevail.

Yet by 1926 Walther Gropius, founder of the Bauhaus, could confidently state: [There] “will be a fundamental shift of the construction process toward industrialization.”

Even in the rather retrograde United States, as the Depression waned and World War II loomed, there developed a widespread expectation that all forms of construction were ripe for a technological, industrial and architectural revolution. One that could produce elegant, affordable and progressive housing for a coming society geared towards “the Common Man” (in the language of the period, expressed in music explicitly by composer Aaron Copland in 1942).

Even architect Wallace Neff (1895 – 1982), famed as Hollywood’s “Architect to the Social Register” – AND “The Stars” dreamed of creating an entirely new means of constructing homes. Affordable, modest homes — not just grand Spanish Colonial estates for the extremely (and with Neff’s early clients, this often meant astoundingly) rich.

An Idea Made Concrete

The inspiration came to him in 1934 while shaving, we are told: “A soap bubble appeared and it held firm against my finger and it came to me: Build with air.”

Neff’s personal circumstances didn’t compel this turn towards reinventing the fundamental system of home construction. True, the Great Depression had dramatically decreased the total volume of residential construction in Southern California between 1929 and the year of his flash of inspiration. Yet, in stark contrast to most Americans, his wealthy Hollywood clients remained virtually untouched by the otherwise near-universal economic collapse.

True, tastes were shifting toward versions of the Modern throughout the 1930s (if more Deco and Streamline Moderne than International Style, in the main); but even so, much of the Hollywood elite resolutely preferred ‘Spanish Colonial.’ Along with the other Revival styles with which Neff was (to all appearances) effortlessly adept. During this grim period, when many architects were pushed out of the profession entirely, Neff kept working.

For the suffering masses, however, plagued by the grim worldwide conditions of the Great Depression, countless concerned engineers, architects and others urgently sought a “Model T”-level breakthrough for housing. When they were not dreaming up (and in a few places, actually building) large quantities of low-cost apartment housing. Such dwellings were fatefully labelled “public housing” in the USA, and given the somewhat less stigmatizing label “social housing” in most of Europe.

Neff spent such time as he could spare from his grand estate projects working out exactly how to conjure his solid buildings out of thin air. Perhaps he was partly inspired by the Zeppelins still criss-crossing the Atlantic right up until the fatal crash of the Hindenburg in May, 1937.

By 1939 Neff had dreamed up a re-usable, inflatable rubberized balloon that would contain and compress the air. He would employ this always-earthbound balloon to support fire-proof, reinforced concrete while it dried and solidified. And then do it again…and again…and again! Neff’s “Airform” would replace the more expensive, disposable and temporary “forms” – the wooden scaffolding otherwise used (and the technique still used today) to pour concrete.

Engineers in the rapidly growing rubber industry of the time had been speculating about such a possibility before Neff finalized his concept, only to reject the idea as technically impractical or even impossible, according to scholar Jeffrey Head. But by the time Neff finally had the opportunity to build with his Airform system, the new material neoprene – an artificial rubber-like material produced from petroleum, first invented by DuPont scientists in 1930 – worked better.

But Neff, who had extensive building experience with the pressurized liquid concrete known as “shotcrete” or “gunite,” lighter in weight but stronger than conventional poured concrete, knew better. (Gunite is still frequently used to construct in-ground pools, though in competition with fiberglass and vinyl nowadays).

As the United States reluctantly prepared for the Second World War, all the factors needed for the introduction of fast, cheap mass-construction of housing finally fell into place. By a stroke of luck, Neff’s client and friend, director King Vidor introduced the architect’s idea to the immensely powerful war-era Secretary of Commerce, Jesse Jones. Jones, as one portion of a vast portfolio, was the unofficial emergency housing czar of the period leading up to America’s entry into war. Neff had at last found someone who could green-light an entire experimental housing development.

“Airform Construction,” given the nod by Secretary Jones, would not just be an airy fantasy, but take concrete shape. First, in a twelve-home rental development in Falls Church, Virginia dubbed by residents and locals the “Igloo Village” (completed in record time in May of 1942; and then sadly demolished by a developer in 1961).

By war’s end, Neff had not only secured multiple patents, but created a corporation: the Airform International Construction Company, or “AICC.” The company’s name itself proclaimed sky’s-the-limit ambition. Thereby Neff entered into direct competition at this point with Walther Gropius and Konrad Wachtsmann’s “General Panel Corporation.”

A New World Architecture For A New World?

Airform construction was not prefabrication (and Gropius’ and Wachsmann’s G.P.C. was far from the only prefab startup of both wartime and immediate postwar periods). This may have seemed a great advantage to Neff and his investors, as their various prefabricated competitors crashed into the vehement opposition not just of lenders but of construction unions, facilitated by local governments that found excuses not to amend building codes in favor of the new aluminum and steel prefabs.

(Among the Modernist prefab companies, the Lincoln, Convair and Lustron panel-cum-metal framing systems are worth noting; along with the more out-there, wildly futuristic Dymaxion houses of R. Buckminster Fuller, not coincidentally prototyped in 1941).

Looking backward, it takes an effort of imagination (but not such a difficult one) to understand how unstoppable the coming revolution in housing construction seemed to Wallace Neff and many others in 1945. But the resistance in the United States itself to these innovations gathered strength quickly in the postwar period. To call this unfortunate, with today’s seemingly intractable housing crisis, is an understatement indeed.

A Prophet – Except In His Own Country

Neff was deeply disappointed when the Falls Church development was not replicated. LIFE magazine had already reviewed the development in an article that ominously predicted “Prefabricated houses must suit consumer tastes, and the public is not interested in igloo houses.” Federal money for Airfrom developments then evaporated after Secretary Jones lost control of the Federal Loan Agency (a predecessor of Freddie Mac and Ginnie Mae) in a 1942 bureaucratic reorganization.

But Neff persevered, securing commissions for commercial Airform structures completed in Arizona and downtown Los Angeles. And a few dome houses at an Arizona defense complex operated by Airform’s most steadfast supporter: Goodyear Corporation. Goodyear was not only a Dow Jones stock index component (since 1930), but both a blimp and wartime aircraft manufacturer; and the very company that manufactured Neff’s neoprene balloons for him throughout the existence of his Airform system.

And, in 1946, he and his brother Andrew secured a parcel in Pasadena on South Los Robles Avenue, and set out to build a larger version of his “single-bubble”, one balloon-form, dome house concept after various earlier sketches. Unlike the diminutive Falls Church single-form houses at 480 interior sq. ft., a single balloon would support a more expansive, elliptical structure enclosing considerably more than 1,000 square feet. And at its center, this new Airform dome soared 12 feet up to its focal point.

On this larger scale, the completed Andrew Neff Residence’s domed roof creates a spacious open interior. The rooms that open to the dome’s full height feel (making up all but bath and the smaller bedroom, today an office) are spacious and airy despite their relatively small footprint.

And the interior plastered ‘walls’ of the shell constructed using the Airform process give the home an otherworldly quality, almost as if it were a habitat from another civilization – or another planet.  The curving interior both reflects and refracts exterior light sources like no other icon of Modernism in Southern California, as if “magic lanterns” had been built into the garden to beam their light-play inside the house, in a later owner – a successful artist’s – own words.

Today, the now unique, last surviving Airform house in the U.S. is itself is a delightful juxtaposition of the natural and the modern, with its curving forms and organic contours providing a stark contrast to the almost universally right-angled, wood-framed construction of the Modernism of the Case Study era – and indeed, nearly all residential and other construction of any kind. Still.  This elliptical design by Neff anticipates the 1960s and ‘70s yearning to “break out of the mid-century box” by almost two decades.

Breaking Out of the Architectural Box

The word “organic” here is not a copywriter’s “puffing” or stretch. Neff explained his other source of inspiration, not just that shaving-bubble, explicitly:

“Sea shells have influenced the designs…[as] nearly permanent and durable structures for living things. [They] were developed by nature throughout the centuries to withstand tremendous pressures and the hazards of the sea…[and] offer mankind protection from natural destructive forces“.

An apt comparison is architect John Lautner’s first curving concrete-shell house – the now very famous “Silvertop” (the Reiner-Burchill Residence in Silverlake, sold by Crosby Doe in 2014). Lautner’s conceived this wildly ambitious, deeply radical design during the mid-1950s. This was a bit less than a decade after the completion of the Andrew Neff Airform Residence. Yet Lautner’s daringly large structure strained the capacity of 1950s engineering and conventional concrete building technique up to their breaking points.

Silvertop was only partially ‘completed’ after seven years of construction, beginning in 1959 (!). And by then, its original, visionary owner had suffered a financial catastrophe inflicted by an unethical business partner. Only following the purchase of the house by the Burchills in 1974 was Lautner’s boldly inspirational architectural landmark fully (well, close to fully) realized. The ambition of Lautner’s new systems and automated elements exceeded even in some cases the technology of the 1970s, with some planned-for features only installed at full functionality after the most recent renovation.

Compare this to the lightning-speed of the Airform method: After a foundation had been put in conventionally, each “Bubble House” dome could be built in as little as two days (a timeframe met at the Falls Church demonstration project in 1942).  With a structure that was almost entirely fireproof, definitely termite-proof and exceptionally strong, there remained just the house’s final interior finishing that might not always hurtle along quite so fast. Yet, in Virginia about one week for each of these small, somewhat Spartan houses provided ample time. Without a doubt, the Airform time-to-completion delivered a revolutionary advance in sheer speed.

The only other even larger, more luxurious Airform residence in the U.S. arrived in 1947, nearby in South Pasadena. Financed by one of Neff’s wealthy Hollywood patrons, the house then became Neff’s ex-wife Louise’s residence for decades, until she sold it in 1970. Under renovation by new owners in 1987, who had removed a perilously large segment of the dome to attach a more conventional addition, the weakened structure was destroyed by the Whittier Narrows earthquake.

The number of proposed Airform housing developments Neff worked on in his own United States makes up a long list…of unrealized projects. Neff worked with Hollywood’s other “Architect to the Stars,” the protean Paul Revere Williams, on a large affordable housing tract in Las Vegas. As many as 20,000 houses for the top-secret nuclear research lab at Los Alamos’ personnel in 1948. 35,000 dome houses for Native people dwelling on Indian Reservations (here again, with Paul Williams). All to no avail.

Outside the United States, there was a much friendlier reception to the efficient, extraordinarily cost-effective Airform system. Whole Airform neighborhoods were built in Dakar, Senegal and in several locations in Brazil. Portugal constructed five thousand Airform buildings, both houses and wine-storage (plus a few other) commercial structures – the biggest success story of Neff’s “Airform Construction Company.” Schools in Mexico… and cabana-cum-bungalows at a resort in the Virgin Islands that could withstand huge hurricanes. An unknown, but large, number of Airform structures built in Pakistan and India. And in Egypt, in Angola, in South Africa… but so few in Neff’s homeland.

Back in the United States, pilot, architect and famed industrial designer Eliot Noyes (best known as the creator of the iconic IBM Selectric typewriter), experimented with a more open variant of the “bubble” or shell-house archetype in Florida with Neff’s approval. His Hobe Sound houses had arch-like structures, with recessed glass walls facing in two directions and closed gunite shells on the other two sides. The two prototypes of 600 interior sq. feet cost all of $3,250 each (!) in 1953.

Compare the excellent, and economically-sized and developed houses of A. Quincy Jones and Whitney Smith’s “Modern Housing Association,” now the Crestwood community in L.A.’s own upper Brentwood. Nearly all the houses cost in excess of $10,000, some of them substantially (as built between 1949 and 1951. That later year witnessed the co-operative efforts effective bankruptcy).

Even the 935 square foot MHA model cost this much. (True, the lots themselves were at least $2,000, as the neighborhood required extensive grading on its hillside site). Despite the use of industrially-produced “asphalt tile” and relatively modest kitchen and bathroom fixtures. Today, the rare, fully restored and largely unaltered surviving MHA designs are sought-after icons of the period, selling at a large per square foot premium to more ordinary Brentwood postwar construction.

By the later 1950s, Neff himself began the slow process of accepting that the Airform break-through would remain almost unexploited (and after another decade, increasingly forgotten) in his home country. It had created a media sensation (Noyes’ Florida variant was lauded in LIFE magazine in 1953); but the American public wanted Levittown, not “Igloo Village.” Overwhelmingly.

There are today, in contrast, some solid reasons to believe a newer pressurized-concrete building boom is in the offing. An independently-developed system, patented by Italian architect Dante Bini has been revived by his architect-son. A triple-form “Malibu Binishells” custom house for actor Robert Downey, Jr. starred in its own profile in “T Magazine”, the style supplement of the New York Times. This “Inflatable House” by Nic Bini of LINE Architecture heralds (one hopes!) a revival of this flexible, fire-resistant and wonderfully organic method of residential construction. That architect himself aims to develop a mass-production domestic system suited to address the contemporary housing crisis in the Western World (and its potential in poorer countries is probably even greater).

The future that was…may yet be.