The Chemosphere House Body Double
John Lautner's octagonal house became the film's defining location
The apartment where Sam Bouchard installs Jake Scully — the place with the telescope — is the Chemosphere, a real house at 7776 Torreyson Drive (also listed as 3105 Torreyson Place) in the Hollywood Hills. Designed by architect John Lautner in 1960, the house is an octagonal structure perched on a single concrete column, cantilevered over a steep hillside. It looks like a flying saucer that landed on a stick.
Lautner designed it for a lot no one else could build on
The site was a near-vertical slope that had been deemed unbuildable. Lautner's solution — a single 5-foot-diameter concrete column supporting the entire house above the grade — was both a structural necessity and an architectural statement. The house was built for aerospace engineer Leonard Malin, who paid approximately $30,000 for it in 1960. It has since been recognized as a Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument. (wikipedia, archdaily)
De Palma used the house to literalize voyeurism
The Chemosphere's elevation — floating above the landscape, looking down on the neighborhood — makes the voyeurism premise physically plausible. Jake can see into Gloria's house because he's literally above her. The architecture becomes a metaphor for the voyeur's position: elevated, detached, apparently safe. When Jake eventually comes down from the house to follow Gloria on foot, he loses that elevation and enters the story he'd been watching from a distance.
Craig Wasson recalled De Palma explaining the concept during production:
"He pulled me aside and told me that this story was about mediated experience." — Craig Wasson, The Flashback Files
The telescope, the elevation, the glass walls — every architectural feature of the Chemosphere reinforces the mediation. Jake never touches or enters Gloria's world directly. He experiences it through lenses and distances, exactly as a moviegoer does.
The house had already appeared in several films before Body Double, but De Palma's use of it is the most famous. It's now inseparable from the film in the same way that the Bates Motel house is inseparable from Psycho.
The Chemosphere has appeared in films and TV since Body Double
The Chemosphere has appeared in numerous films, TV shows, and music videos since Body Double, including Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle (2003) and The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. Taschen publisher Benedikt Taschen purchased and restored the house in 2000, commissioning architect Frank Escher for the renovation.