Though Ant Farm, the experimental architecture firm founded by Doug Michels and Chip Lord in 1968, is not among the most well known firms of that era, they produced a number of projects both famous and deserving of fame. They are perhaps best known for their early experiments with inflatable buildings or their art installation of 10 half-buried Cadillacs in the Texas desert (titled 'Cadillac Ranch'). Less publicized, however, is the House of the Century, an indescribably-strange lake house. 

Built in 1973, the house was built for wealthy art patron Marilyn Oshman and her family as a weekend getaway. According to Mark Lamster, Oshman let the architecture firm conjure anything that came from their wildest dreams. The design was inspired by "Automotive styling; the Apollo program; the Spanish architect Antoni Gaudi; and above all Buckminster Fuller, the inventor of the geodesic dome and honorary captain of what he called Spaceship Earth," according to Lamster. The product was a home without a single right angle, mass produced accessory nor familiar proportion; the home was among the most idiosyncratic of the 20th century.

As alluring as the home was from a distance, however, it was described by its owners as less than functional. According to Lamster, "The bathroom sink drained into the tub [...] The ship-style ladder to the upper floors was a bigger problem. To climb up 30 feet on its curving rungs was more of a circus act than something you could do with any kind of regularity, and if you were trying to carry something up with you, it was all but impossible."

The home was not used as often as expected, and was unfortunately inundated by flood waters in 1985 and was negatively affected by subsequent weather patterns, leaving the pristine white ferro-concrete shell of the home a dusky, bunker like husk and the interiors unsalvageable. It is in this state to this day, with no official plans as of yet to preserve, demolish, or let it be. This third choice, to allow it to further decompose on the Texas lakeside, makes it unintentionally akin to the half-buried Cadillacs Ant Farm had willfully left to the elements since 1974. The two now appear to be similarly weathered; one by design and the other by circumstance.