Spaceship Home Inspired by ‘2001: A Space Odyssey,‘ Literally

When guests are looking for her house, owner Anna Pearce simply tells them to look for the spaceship.

It’s hard to miss the Cape Schanck home, located on the Mornington Peninsula southwest of Melbourne, Australia. It bears a striking resemblance to a spaceship, and Pearce admits her architect-brother Paul Morgan’s design was inspired by the film “2001: A Space Odyssey.”

Besides Morgan’s tendency toward “cinematic architecture,” the home’s unique design was also born out of environmental considerations. Perched near the craggy coastline, the home is nestled among tea trees on a spot that receives the full brunt of the weather caused by the sea, particularly the wind.

Morgan did a lot of wind tunnel studies and built a model of the house, Pearce says, to see how the wind would impact the house.

The other environmental consideration was keeping the home cool in the summer, when temperatures reach more than 110 degrees Fahrenheit.

So he designed a bulbous cistern in the living room that comes down from the ceiling. It collects rainwater from the roof, bears some of the weight of the roof.

Guests have described as “a teardrop, an epiglottis (the hanging thing in your mouth, you’ll see it), and a bowling pin,” she says. The real inspiration may have been Morgan’s partner’s pregnancy.

“A lot of people come into the house and want to sort of just hold it,” she says.

The home has three bedrooms and two bathrooms, located on the darker side of the house, which is protected from the wild weather, and they have shutters that open intersect the windows and cover them when necessary.

The house is available to rent for a getaway on Airbnb (the source of the photos here).