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The much-photographed 1946 masterwork by architect Richard Neutra might be the happiest marriage of the abstract geometry of modern architecture with the desert-and-mountain landscape of Palm Springs. Located at 470 West Vista Chino in Palm Springs, California, this masterpiece of architecture was designed to connect residents and visitors to the beautiful surrounding desert, letting the outside in and vice versa. The two-story, five-bedroom, five-bathroom, home was built in a pinwheel design with low horizontal planes that bring the house closer to the desert landscape, giving the illusion that it is floating amongst the mountains.
Architectural Design
Marmol Radziner spent more than five years painstakingly revamping the Kaufmann Desert House in a thoughtful process that included an on-site archaeological excavation and poring over Neutra’s archives at UCLA. Such thorough research led him to convince a Utah quarry to re-open a section of its site so that more of the original buff-colored sandstone could be obtained. Birch-veneered plywood was matched, concrete and silica sand floors were patched, and even ductwork was carefully hidden. The Kaufmann Desert House is arranged like a pinwheel, with various wings radiating from the central living and dining room.
Kaufmann House; Richard Neutra's Iconic Palm Springs Desert Modern Design
How “Don’t Worry Darling” Became the First Movie to Film at Richard Neutra’s Kaufmann House - Dwell
How “Don’t Worry Darling” Became the First Movie to Film at Richard Neutra’s Kaufmann House.
Posted: Thu, 22 Sep 2022 07:00:00 GMT [source]
That kind of fame can have its drawbacks, however, especially for the person in charge of selling a house that nearly everybody, it seems, wants to see. Out of self-defense — and consideration for the owners, who still occupy the residence — Doe came up with a Draconian test to sift the gold from the sand. “I tell them,” he says with the modulated tones of a man who for 30 years has sold houses by big-name architects, “that they can see the house, if they can qualify to pay for it.” The property is listed for $12 million. When Brent and Beth Harris first saw the Kaufmann House, it was neither a pretty palace nor an obvious candidate for restoration.
Inside the $25 Million Kaufmann Desert House
The design and construction of the Kaufmann Desert House fall at an exciting point in American history. The war moratoriums were slowly lifted as World War II ended, but relatively strict building regulations remained enforced. However, Neutra was able to find his way around the restrictions by breaking ground on the foundation a few days before the official enforcement. The project resulted in a total cost of nearly $300,000, surpassing the current single-family residence average of $40,000. Before Frank Sinatra commissioned his Twin Palms Estate or Elvis and Priscilla honeymooned in the “House of Tomorrow,” department-store magnate Edgar Kaufmann asked Richard Neutra to design him a home in the California desert. Now, for the first time in 11 years, that house — which helped define postwar modernism in Palm Springs — is for sale.
Neutra’s Poolside Gossip House Asks $25M in Palm Springs
The manmade freshwater lake, designed for waterskiing and other sports, is regularly tested for water quality, making recreation, including fishing, safe. The project contains 52 lots, 42 of which have been developed, each opening onto a sandy beach and private boat dock. More recently built homes, such as VanDenBos’ sale in 2023, have dialed up the luxury, with commodious common spaces and generously sized bedrooms with en suite baths. The plan leaves spaces for the courtyards on the periphery of the plan, creating a system of privacy appropriate to the specific occupant in the space; hosts, children, guests, servants, etc. The living and bedroom spaces are organized around a circulation system with terraces, courtyards, and walkways that tie the arms back into the central living room and serve as paths allowing different social groups to interact within the center of the house.
"Tiny homes are not the big solution to homelessness that we need"
Harris says that when he and Beth first looked at the property in 1990, they weren’t particularly interested in acquiring a desert house; they were more architectural tourists. At the time, Beth was studying for her doctorate in architecture at University of California, Los Angeles under Thomas Hines, who wrote the definitive biography of Richard Neutra, according to Hess. After immigrating from Austria, Neutra started his career in America working for a series of well-known architects.
A Landmark Modernist House Heads to Auction
Little known architectural details were Robert Imber's passion - Desert Sun
Little known architectural details were Robert Imber's passion.
Posted: Sun, 17 Oct 2021 07:00:00 GMT [source]
The buyers of this Sky Valley haven are now living their best quasi-retired life along with their multiple pets on a remote 5-acre lot that once served as an equestrian ranch. The property still maintains the imprint of its horsing days with four extant stables, paddocks, and a tack room. The rooms can sleep up to 18 guests, thanks to a detached 1,000-square-foot casita, while the garage shelters up to seven vehicles. Rich, natural wood tones and archways throughout come together to form a refuge on the desert frontier with clever nods to its heritage, such as the repurposed wagon-wheel dining room chandelier. Expanding the scope to look at the top seller in each of the nine cities of Greater Palm Springs illustrates the diversity in styles and building types across the desert communities. From the opulent Madison Club estate that secured the highest sale overall to two lots with ranching roots, here are the top 2023 home sales by city.
The Dwell House Is a Modern Prefab ADU Delivered to Your Backyard
While that may not seem pertinent to a discussion of the house’s design, it is interesting to speculate how it might have influenced the creation of private and communal spaces on the property. The Kaufmann Desert House, an architectural marvel that helped define the modernist aesthetic of the resort city of Palm Springs, is up for sale at $25m. The Sagrada Familia in Barcelona Spain, by architect Antoni Gaudi is a seminal work of architecture. Listen to the story of how the cathedral came to fruition and why it is one of the most important works of architecture in history. Several solutions have been implemented to help address California’s housing crisis and create more affordable housing options for California’s low—to mid-income residents. Allowing Accessory Dwelling Units to be added to single-family residences are steadily becoming one of the most notable and widely utilized methods by homeowners all over the state.
Eight chocolate-brown interiors that look good enough to eat
This technique allows the eye to travel from the inside to the outside with minimal interruption, visually connecting the two spaces. Many architects used this common strategy, notably Neutra’s mentor Frank Lloyd Wright. The legendary pool with its views of the San Jacinto Mountains is still there (rumor has it Neutra had the pool built first so he could cool off while working on the site), now with the addition of a glass-walled pool house and a tennis court on the lot next door. Palm Springs, California undoubtedly has some of the most lavish and beautiful homes in North America. A visit there is like being transported back to the Golden Age of Hollywood where you may just find Bing Crosby playing a round of golf or Marilyn Monroe sipping a martini by the pool.
She also writes about design and architecture and was previously the style & interiors writer at Town & Country and the managing editor of Dwell. To continue their efforts of preservation, they decided to put the house for auction at Christie's auction for high profile, contemporary, art. They believed that only serious buyers interested in continuing the preservation of this historical site would purchase the house at an auction. The house sold at auction for 19.1 million dollars by an anonymous buyer but later fell out of escrow.
Architects worldwide have extracted principles from this building throughout the course of history. Santa Maria del Fiore, also known as the Duomo of Florence, is an iconic architectural landmark in the Tuscan capital. It is a stunning masterpiece of architecture and stands as one of the most recognizable buildings in Europe. The great dome that covers the structure was designed by Filippo Brunelleschi and completed in 1436 – making it one of the oldest domes still standing today. It can give insight into our ancestors' customs, rituals, technologies, religions, and daily life. Architecture can provide a deeper understanding of the evolution and development of the human species.
This is particularly evident in the living room, whose walls of steel and glass slide outward toward the southeast, while the construction of deck and supports the hanging wall sliding moving toward the pool and spatially linking the house with it. This radial arm became the hallmark of Neutra, is the “spider leg,” the umbilical cord that merges space and building. Richard Neutra built a building in which the horizontal planes of the decks seem to float on transparent glass walls, giving the whole an overall look of lightness. The Kaufmann House is one of the most famous buildings by Neutra, who was a key figure of the modernist architecture movement.
The Kaufmann house was included in a list of all time top 10 houses in Los Angeles, despite its being in Palm Springs, in a Los Angeles Times survey of experts in December 2008. The rear facade of the house opens to the landscape and garden, while the facade overlooking the street appears closed, with its facade of ashlar stone. Everything from the special concrete–silica sand mixed floors to the Fresnel lenses on the ceiling lights has been meticulously reproduced to re-create those golden years. But one of the most memorable former owners is socialite and philanthropist Nelda Linsk, who was captured by Aarons chatting poolside with model Helen Dzo Dzo in 1970.
Five bedroom suites, plus two guest units and a dining room that seats up to three-dozen guests, make this an entertainer’s dream. While some of its original Moorish flourishes have been swapped in favor of Mediterranean Revival elements, the forms of the courtyard arcade and a romantic, evocative feeling remain. “Palm Springs has such a storied history that’s anchored in homes like this,” Gault says. He was convinced that before the house could be built, the pool needed to be completed.
Much was made of Neutra's skirting of local ordinances that prohibited second stories, but similar upper-level sleeping porches were commonplace in the desert. They were often included in early Spanish-style homes that, in pre-air conditioning days, had sleeping porches (or gloriettes) that caught the evening breeze and allowed locals to sleep outdoors during the hottest summer months. The origins of the house are familiar to architecture fans because of the pedigree of its owner, Edgar Kaufmann, the Pittsburg department store magnate.
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