The building, which the Encyclopædia Britannica once called "the most modern home built in the world",[1] is admired both for the ingenuity of its solution to the problem of the site and for its unique octagonal design.

Because of a concrete pedestal, almost 20 feet (6 m) in diameter, buried under the earth and supporting the column, the house has survived earthquakes and heavy rains.

Tashen commissioned a pastiche rug by German painter Albert Oehlen and a hanging lamp of bent plexiglas strips by Jorge Pardo, a Los Angeles artist.

The Taschens planned to commission Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas to build a large new guesthouse at the base of Chemosphere on the site once owned by Leonard Malin's in-laws.

[11] The house forms part of a retrospective of Lautner's work which was shown at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles between August and October 2008.

[12] The building was first used in a dramatic film as a futuristic residence in "The Duplicate Man", a 1964 episode of the ABC TV-program The Outer Limits, based on a science fiction story by American author Clifford D. Simak.

Exterior scenes for the television episode were shot on location; a detailed sound stage set of the house's interior was built.

[13] In 1996 the Chemosphere was represented as Troy McClure's (voiced by Phil Hartman) fictional Springfield hilltop mansion in The Simpsons TV series.