Palm Springs: An Architectural Tour

As desert design hub Palm Springs hosts the annual Modernism Week, here is our round up of the town’s architectural highlights.

By Estella Shardlow on Monday 13th February, 2012

Early Spanish settlers called this place ‘The Palm of God's hand’, thanks to the dry, sunny weather that this desert village 110 miles east of Los Angeles enjoyed, with the San Jacinto mountain range acting as a windbreaker or sunshade depending on the season. It was this seclusion and sunshine that drew Hollywood types here in the early 20th century and saw Palm Springs become a Mecca for modernist design.
Where rich patrons went, so architects followed. Architects such as Richard Neutra, Albert Frey and John Lautner created luxurious retreats that tempered the lessons of the International Style and Bauhaus with playful LA-style showiness. These high-end vacation houses typically featured open-plan layouts, air-conditioning, swimming pools and floor-to-ceiling windows. The more innovative and fantastical the better - a carousel house that turned to avoid the sun's glare counts among the mid-century buildings that put this Coachella Valley retreat on the map.

Kauffman Desert House
“As an architect, my life has been governed by the goal of building environmental harmony, functional efficiency, into the experience of everyday living.” When Richard Neutra designed this glass, steel and stone house for Edgar and Lilianne Kaufmann in 1946, he set out to create a structure that would harmonise with the desert landscape as well as offering shelter from its harsh climatic conditions. Plenty of natural lighting and floating planes bring a sense of weightlessness and transparency, while the major outdoor rooms are enclosed by a row of movable vertical fins to shield sandstorms and summer heat. It is one of the most important examples of International Style architecture in the United States and the only one still in private hands.

Elrod House
Built in 1968 for interior designer Arthur Elrod, the Elrod House is memorable for its enormous domed concrete roof and the fact it appeared in the 1971 James Bond film Diamonds are Forever. Like many other modernist architects, Lautner sought to fuse interior and exterior; in this case amassing boulders in Elrod House’s living room and designing a swimming pool that runs from inside to out.

Sunnylands
Limousines flanked by Secret Service detail were a common sight around the Palm Springs estate known as Sunnylands, since its owners Walter and Leonore Annenberg regularly received Presidents Eisenhower and Bush, Margaret Thatcher and Princess Grace of Monaco as visitors. After a decade undergoing restoration, the 25,000-square-foot house, designed by A. Quincy Jones, will throw open its doors once again just in time for Palm Springs Modernism Week.

Park Imperial South
Modernism lives on at this classic address. Barry A. Berkus created this stunning accomplished community in 1960 as an early experiment in condo living. Its design remains virtually untouched, from the terrazzo floors and zigzag ‘folded plate’ roofline to the floor-to-ceiling windows and sliding glass doors.

Twin Palms Estate
One can but dream of the cocktail parties that must have gone on at Frank Sinatra’s 1947 Palm Springs retreat. The original sound and recording system he installed to cut records here are still in situ, while retreats once owned by Al Jolson and Cary Grant are just round the corner from this E. Stewart Williams-designed building. Combining great mid-century design with Hollywood mythology, today Twin Palms can be rented for holidays or functions.

Loewy House
Swiss architect Albert Frey brought the De Stijl Movement and German Bauhaus Schools to the Californian desert when he built the Loewy House at 600 Panorama Road. The low-rise pavilion was built as a bachelor pad in 1946-47 for the famous industrial designer, Raymond Loewy. Brazenly modern for its time, the Loewy House was “the talk of the town,” according to a contemporaneous newspaper article. "When you slide open the glass walls, it's almost like living outdoors," remarked its second owner, Jim Gaudineer, who reportedly had his 1963 Studebaker Avanti painted copper-brown to coordinate with the house he so loved.

Palm Springs Modernism Week is from 16-22 February 2012.