The building was designed to be three stories, with the lowest floor housing a library built into the hillside, a glass-enclosed ground floor ringed by columns, and the clamshell containing three bedrooms, three baths, living room, dining room, kitchen and sun deck, all connected by an elevator.

The ENR profile of the architect, Charles Deaton, described how he “plastically shapes a building as a free-form sculpture, only intuitively being guided by structural purpose, until he achieves a satisfactory form. Thereafter he fits structure to form.”

The clamshell is a welded cage of standard steel shapes serving as a structural skeleton, covered with metal mesh and pneumatically applied shotcrete. Deaton explained that his design required structural engineers to solve problems of batter and torsion.

He also designed several unconventional bank buildings, including one resembling flower petals and another with an ovoid shape.

Deaton had worked in aircraft design, industrial design and commercial art before turning to architecture.

He ran out of money and never completed the clamshell home’s interior. It remained unfinished until it was sold in 1999 and completed in 2003.