Few residences capture the essence of desert modernism like Albert Frey’s Frey House II. Built in 1964, the mountainside retreat was carefully sited after Frey spent 12 months charting the sun with a 10-foot pole to determine the ideal orientation.The result is a study in harmony with the desert: floor-to-ceiling glass walls, intimate built-ins, and a dramatic boulder embedded into the great room wall.
Racquetclub Center This strip of midcentury modern decadence invites discovery on your way into or out of town. Some of the shops (and their owners) are local legends, having been in the business for decades. Because you always have room for one more MCM specimen:...
Oh, to be 20 again. It’s a glorious age, full of audacious vim and vigor (and a lot less face cream). This year, Modernism Week enters its rip-roaring 20s with nary a fine line in sight and with even more thrill-seeking vitality than last year, which drew a stylish...
kaufmann desert house Richard Neutra, 1947 With deep overhangs and strategic louvre openings designed to frame mountains and sky, the Kaufmann Desert House is a case study in light and shadow. Richard Neutra designed it for Pittsburgh department store magnate Edgar...
1922 Designed in 1922 by Austrian architect Rudolph M. Schindler for globetrotting eugenicist and pioneering date farmer Paul Popenoe and his bride, Betty, the erstwhile Popenoe Cabin in what is now the city of Coachella is widely considered the region’s first...
Shag’s Palm Springs Art Puts Classic Cars in the Spotlight
It’s a sunny day on a picture-perfect street in Palm Springs’ Vista Las Palmas neighborhood. Classic cars line the driveways of midcentury modern homes: an Avanti outside an A-frame, a 1966 Pontiac GTO convertible at a house with a butterfly roof, a Porsche 356...
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How the Historic Aluminaire House Was Rebuilt at Palm Springs Art Museum
It stands assertively in the south parking lot of the Palm Springs Art Museum, a compact but powerful, gleaming beacon of modernism. Palm Springs might seem to be the most logical place for the Aluminaire House to have settled, but it took a very long time and a very...
Restoration of Albert Frey’s Bel Vista House Earns PS ModCom Award
In a city of peacocking houses, the Bel Vista tract designed by Albert Frey was never intended to attract outsized attention. The 15 houses occupying neat lots on a block near Sunrise Way and East Tachevah Drive coexist more like a modest cluster of finches than any...
Poised for release in February 2025, a seminal new book by author and architectural historian Alan Hess establishes the Palm Springs School of Architecture as a significant contributor to modernism across the United States. Titled The Palm Springs School: Desert...
Exclusive Preview: New Book Defines Palm Springs School of Architecture
From our 21st-century vantage point, we can look back and discern that a group of 20th-century Palm Springs architects formed a cohesive yet diverse Palm Springs School of Architecture. Each arrived in this astonishing landscape for a different reason. Their creative...
Sequins came out in full force for the opening night of Modernism Week in February. The annual gala, produced by Palm Springs event company Momentous, dazzled with a disco theme. Hundreds of well-dressed guests, many in wigs and platform heels, understood the...
When I arrive at the Ocotillo Lodge, Marilyn Monroe, in her iconic white halter dress, is having her photo taken in front of a cherry red 1956 MGA. She smiles, lifts one shoulder, and breathily says, “I’ve been waiting for you all morning!” It’s not really Marilyn, of...
Albert Frey had a simplistic but accurate view of history. “We had the Stone Age, Bronze Age, and Iron Age,” the architect said in 1987. “I believe we’re in the Age of Aluminum.” Frey began using aluminum with the experimental Aluminaire House of 1931. Originally...
A Conversation of Wit, Wisdom, and a Whisper of Gossip With Edith Head stars award-winning actor Susan Claassen. This internationally acclaimed stage production invites the audience into an elaborate period-perfect setting, as though they were visiting the costume...
The New Zealand modernist architect Peter Mark Brown died 24 years ago, leaving his son, Simon Mark Brown, curious about his father’s work and life. The younger Brown began investigating and filming his late father’s work for a documentary, Brown vs. Brown, which will...
Leave it to modernism masters to disrupt the orthodox designs of ecclesiastical edifices, challenging opulent ornamentation with a blasphemous onslaught of concrete.Outright brutalism would prove too severe for the likes of Le Corbusier, Marcel Breuer,...
You have finally acquired the midcentury modern home of your dreams. Now, visiting friends and family want to know all about it — from its distinctive butterfly roof to the renown of its architect (likely William Krisel) and its mysterious lack of a basement....
The 1990s were not a happy time in Palm Springs. Like Sleeping Beauty, the city lay neglected and forgotten under layers of dust. The good news was that its midcentury modern gems sat undisturbed. So when photographer David Glomb and I started our adventure...
A shiny object of cutting-edge repute is taking its signature blocky shape on the grounds of the Palm Springs Art Museum. However, unlike most gleaming groundbreakers, the aluminum-clad, mono-monikered Aluminaire is hardly newfangled, at least in terms of age. The...
Trevor O’Donnell has just as much fun tapping into his architecture knowledge now as when he stepped in front of his first tour group 11 years ago. “I find new things to talk about. I meet homeowners who tell interesting backstories. So, the tour evolves,” he says....
