Interiors By Design: Palm Springs Swank

Though I have studied Southern California modernist architecture since my Stanford University days, I was unprepared for the rich cache of iconic examples spread before me during my recent trip to Palm Springs. No photograph could have prepared me for the almost absurd juxtaposition of the brutal, ancient desert mountains with the artificial lushness of the irrigated valley floor. Only American unfettered optimism and expendable wealth could foster an environment so ephemeral, so unnaturally uninhabitable by its ever-burgeoning and voraciously expanding population.Yet all the politically correct environmental disapproval aside, Palm Springs showcases block upon block of creative, intact, modernist residences that are amusing and inspiring.

The ancient, dried lake bed of Palm Springs (yes, there is a bubbly spring in Palm Springs) lies flatly above an enormous aquifer, which waters its many golf courses, verdant lawns and cascading bougainvillea. Rising more than 10,000 feet above this dried lake bed are the rock walls of the San Jacinto Mountains, blocking coastal fog and cloudy weather. This balmy, warm, dry climate originally attracted patients with respiratory ailments, but by the 1920s, the uber-wealthy discovered its sensually relaxed charms and built sprawling Spanish ranches and Mediterranean haciendas. Soon to follow were the Hollywood stars and starlets, whose protective and powerful studios banned all photographers and journalists from pursuing their wards in this desert oasis. This protection allowed those actors and actresses to let down their hair and behave badly. And so they did. As a result, many of the Hollywood set built second homes there; hence, an entire subdivision is entitled the Movie Colony," with homes built by Frank Sinatra, Bob Hope, Dinah Shore, Elizabeth Taylor, Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, to name a few among the notable and the notorious.

The winter playground of the “second-home set” spawned a more adventurous approach to design. With stately primary residences in Greenwich, Connecticut, Lake Forest, Illinois, or Grosse Point, Michigan, snowbirds were enthusiastic to embrace not only the relaxed California lifestyle, but also its architecture of pleasure and leisure. Post World War II, a cadre of young architects, high on the infectious, ordered philosophies of Mies van der Rohe, Le Corbusier, Gropius and the Bauhaus, were ardent to practice inventively and without the rigorous weather of the East Coast or the pelting rains of the West to contend with. They were free to diminish the lines between interior and exterior living using glass, steel, terrazzo, stone and wood in a light, fluid manner. Steeply pitched roofs, so essential for water runoff, gave way to flat roofs enabling the horizontal line to dominate. The soaring vertical backdrop of powerful mountains sits dramatically behind the long, low lines of homes. Another phenomenon singularly characteristic of Palm Springs is that the views are upward. Therefore, smart placement of the home and clever landscaping oftentimes convinces the visitor that the soaring, surrounding mountain above is hers alone with no neighbors or other obstructions to share it with. The homes, once entered and experienced in their self-contained landscapes, appear to be a singular oasis in a vast desert wilderness.

Perhaps my favorite home, long known as the icon of modernist Palm Springs design, is the Edgar Kaufmann home by Richard Neutra. Slender steel columns delicately support flat, thin roofs, allowing large veils of glass to erase the delineation between exterior and interior space. Rectangular cut stone walls bisect spaces, and an open air pavilion with large, metal louvers floats above it all. It is not only Julius Shulman's otherworldly photo of this completely open and available home, cutting dramatically low horizontals across the towering, rocky mountains, that has made this home so famous, but also Slim Aarons's seductive snap of bouffanted ’60s beauties lingering languorously by the beckoning pool. Interestingly, Edgar Kaufmann, who had commissioned Frank Lloyd Wright's "Fallingwater" in Pennsylvania, bypassed that "has been" architect for a onetime protégé of Wright, European-born Richard Neutra.

Furnishings followed these lines. Low-slung, horizontal and “lounge-y," these sofas were sculptural and crafted with a new material: foam. Gone were the days of down-filled, curvaceous, plump sofas. Obviously meant for a younger, more spry audience, the close-to-the-ground furnishings, coffee tables and ottomans were not intended for arthritic knees, hip replacements and rotator cuff issues. Perching seductively, lounging and draping luxuriously, they were the physicality of the moment, with an ashtray always in convenient reach.

When curious about real estate in Palm Springs, one frequently hears of a listing referred to as an "Alexander house." The Alexanders, an energetic, charismatic couple, who enjoyed an almost royal position in Palm Springs development history, died tragically in a plane accident. But before this terrible event, they hoisted the careers of many an architect and partnered to create wonderfully creative and varied subdivisions. With architect Donald Wexler, a prolific architect, aficionado of steel, and designer for the lighter-than-air Palm Springs Airport, the Alexanders requested prefab homes that neither resembled each other nor appeared prefab. With identical floor plans, Wexler altered roof lines, creating zigzagged outlines or canted, dramatic angles, allowing for clerestory windows that could capture the mountain views beyond. Walking down these streets, passersby cannot possibly recognize their similarities.

Departing from the more austere International style that was so inspirational to the Southern California Modernist, John Lautner created undulating, curved environments in the Bob Hope house and Arthur Elrod home. The Bob Hope house, something of a creeping armadillo shape lumbering over some large boulders (and now for sale at $23 million) is a remarkable, enormous swirl of hoops and rings. Oddly decorated with floral chintzes and sweet puffs by Dolores Hope (while Bob was off gallivanting with leading ladies, among them Ethel Merman), the large, metal-clad roof stretches over both indoor and outdoor rooms. A dining room, designated by Dolores to seat no fewer than 500 of her intimate friends and family, was a challenge even for the deft adventurer Lautner.

Palmer and Krisel homes, like some of Wexler's, met the growing post-war demand for affordable second homes. Working with builders, they developed practical and affordable homes using wood, steel and concrete blocks set on slab foundations. Creative roof lines, like the butterfly roof and spider designs, singled out their work. Using low, slanting structures articulated with sun-shading trellises, view-framing clerestory windows and efficiency kitchens, Krisel, still enjoying a fruitful practice, vowed to relate his interiors to the plantings and, respectful of the desert, worked with swaths of pebbles, recycled tire bits and patterned concrete. The effect is wonderfully whimsical, yet appropriate.

Another design mecca is Sunnylands, the A. Quincy Jones spread commissioned by the civic-minded and philanthropic Annenberg. Though the gardens alone are breathtaking, the luxe, Billy Haines-designed interiors are not to be missed to fathom this remarkable talent. The viewer is astonished as he beholds a digital reproduction of every painting hung in the place that has been donated by the Annenbergs to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Somewhat swallowed up in the Met, the quality and quantity and importance of what hung above the sofas and fireplaces in Sunnylands, now gifted to the Met for all of us to enjoy, is unfathomable. Monet's water lilies, Degas's ballerinas, Picassos, and Braques, etc., litter the walls of this airy residence. Sunnylands, a refined, relaxed and inspiring retreat for our nation's leaders, artists, philosophers, environmentalists, diplomats and philanthropists to gather together to promise peace, new thoughts and profound problem-solving is an inspiration. As a symbol of Palm Springs's suave, swank style, Sunnylands stands as the essence of aspirational desert chic and Southern California Modernism.

"