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Ever wondered what's at the heart of desert modernism? Perhaps, Frank Lloyd Wright defined it best:
'A desert building should be nobly simple in outline as the region itself is sculptured [...], the manmade building heightening the beauty of the desert and the desert more beautiful because of the building,' the modernist architecture master said in the May 1940 issue of Arizona Highways magazine.
Wright’s trenchant yet florid observations suggest the powerful urgency of desert architecture – combining shelter and openness, materials that stem from their land and modern forms, a highly tailored architecture rubbing shoulders with the raw power of nature.
Kaufmann House by Richard Neutra in Palm Springs
What is desert modernism?
Any building for harsh, extreme environments must address harnessing climatic conditions in the service of human comfort. Earthen-based materials and indigenous building traditions come into play, revealing time-honoured ingenuity developed over millennia. Then, in the twentieth century, unadorned forms shaped by the broader sweep of modernism were responses to new tools and technical innovations that met the cultural moment then, and continue to do so today - impacting design in arid environments too.
Key characteristics of desert modernism
Desert modernism isn’t a monolith (and naturally, examples abound in many other countries), and yet hallmarks emerged from the architecture community's earliest experiments in the 1920s through the cities and suburbs that bloomed throughout the American Southwest in the mid-late 1940s through the 1960s. Designers and developers looked to readily available, industrially produced building components as well as earthen elements – sometimes culled from the site itself – that, when combined with skilful architectural moves, established templates for seamless indoor/outdoor living.
Roofs with generous eaves intended to provide shade were generally flat or gently sloped, given the general absence of rain. Hardscaping and plant choices reflected the surrounding native vegetation. Despite the advent of air conditioning, the most thoughtful iterations of this genre would continue to sensitively manage the realities of desert climates, such as harsh west-facing exposures, through passive measures in shading and ventilation - for example, using breeze-blocks.
Hugh Kaptur (b. 1931) is one of Palm Springs’ most prolific architects and part of a group of modernists who defined Desert Modernism. Pictured here, his house for Hollywood actor Steve McQueen. Photography: Mark Davidson, excerpted from the publication Hollywood Modern (Rizzoli, 2018)
Desert modernism in the US: a brief history
Up until the Second World War, the American Southwest’s deeply hybridised cultural and social milieu was largely evident in its formal and vernacular architecture. The romanticised Spanish Colonial Revival style borrowed references from Spain and neighbouring Mexico, with localised architectural dialects emerging throughout the border states of California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas. Pueblo Revival architecture and adobe structures mimicked Native American architectural heritage, particularly in New Mexico. From today’s perspective, however, such places can carry an allure of authenticity that in some cases might be more rooted in complicated myth than historical fact.
Palm Springs Convention Center by William Pereira
Certain zero-humidity hamlets sparsely populated by non-natives, notably Palm Springs, attracted those seeking relief from respiratory ailments. Nellie Coffman’s The Desert Inn in Palm Springs eventually grew from a tent-like sanitarium opened in 1909 to a 35-acre, gracious, full-service getaway popular with the Southern California glitterati. Resorts such as the Frank Lloyd Wright, Jr.-designed Oasis Hotel and El Mirador Hotel followed. What had been a nascent wellness industry that valued seclusion and ample space planted the seeds of the town’s hospitality and leisure boom where modernism would thrive.
Early residential examples and proponents
Rudolph Schindler’s Popenoe Cabin, built in 1922 at the eastern edge of the Coachella Valley in Indio, California, is generally regarded as the first modern effort in the Southern California region that’s become most closely associated with the movement. The modest wood frame and concrete structure, which regretfully has been demolished, shares a generally overlapping timeframe and characteristics with the architect’s own radical home and studio in West Hollywood.
The desert became a muse to leading practitioners of the early and mid-twentieth century who ventured westward. Frank Lloyd Wright, Bruce Goff, Rudolph Schindler, Richard Neutra, and John Lautner were emigres or Midwestern transplants who embraced experimentation in uninterrupted spatial expanse. In 1937, Grace Lewis Miller commissioned Neutra for a winter home and studio to support her Mensendieck System of Functional Exercises teaching practice. The compact structure sat lightly on the land, complete with a reflecting pool that touched what was then an unsullied Sonoran Desert vista.
Joe Price studio, No 1, showing the perspective with bridge, 1953-1954, by Bruce Goff - seen in an exhibition at the Fred Jones Jr Museum of Art in Oklahoma in 2010
Nearly a decade later, the more ambitious Edgar J. Kaufmann House by Neutra rose from its large, sandy lot. Its interplay of flat roofs, a second-level open 'gloriette,' floor-to-ceiling plate glass, sandstone, crimped sheet-metal fascia, and seductive poolside outdoor lounge was built for the Pittsburgh department store magnate who had famously commissioned Fallingwater from Wright. Julius Shulman’s 1947 photograph and Slim Aarons’ evocative 'Poolside Gossip' image taken in 1970 helped broadcast the home and modern desert lifestyle to the world. This language proved adaptable to being both practical and deluxe.
Albert Frey was well known in the Palm Springs architecture scene for having designed some of the town’s most iconic houses. Pictured here, a key example; Frey House II.
Architects John Porter Clark and Le Corbusier disciple Albert Frey committed themselves to an intensive consideration of how to design and build for the desert when, in 1935, they established their business partnership that for nearly two decades shaped the Palm Springs area.
Prolific practitioners such as E. Stewart Williams, William E. Cody, Donald Wexler, William Krisel, and Dan Palmer continued to experiment with low-slung residences –often with open plans and always with a strong indoor-outdoor connection - at various price points – in the Coachella Valley, using a palette of concrete, steel, and glass.
Edris House by E Stewart Williams in Palm Springs (1954) . See more of Street-Porter’s Palm Springs photography here.
Aspirational prototypes evolved into replicable models at a larger scale. The 1950s saw the growth of suburban tract developments in settings with inexpensive land that promised the winter-chill-free good life, complete with the latest in technological creature comforts, such as air-conditioning. An ethos that advanced modernism’s democratic leanings was embedded in the residential and commercial work of architects such as Al Beadle and Ralph Haver in Phoenix, Arizona, and throughout the built environment of that ultimate human playground: Las Vegas.
Planned neighbourhoods dotted with post-and-beam dwellings, including Marlen Grove in Phoenix (1952), Paradise Palms in Las Vegas (1960), and the Alexander Construction Co.’s multiple communities in the Coachella Valley, offered accessible templates of conventional American family life rather than a taste of the architectural avant-garde (more, relatively luxurious developments were centred around golfing and cocktail-abetted socialising). Details such as butterfly roofs and folded plates conveyed post-war optimism, and elements, including concrete brise soleil or breeze blocks, added pattern, depth, and playfulness.
The case of the desert utopias
Seekers in search of spiritual enlightenment and higher purpose - architects included, either directly for their own pursuits or in the service of clients - have also found themselves in the great arid vastness. Frank Lloyd Wright passed on the opportunity to design the Institute of Mentalphysics for Rev. Edwin John Dingle, known as Ding Le Mei, on a sprawling site near Joshua Tree Park acquired in 1941. Instead, his son, the aforementioned Lloyd Wright, accepted the task of creating multiple buildings on the still-extant (yet not completed as originally envisioned) colony, incorporating rocks and materials from the land itself and principles of sacred geometry to support the organisation’s mission.
Taliesin West designed by Frank Lloyd Wright and built in 1937.
'Organic architecture is distinguished from the facade-making which passes for modern architecture today, as you can see in our home, Taliesin West,' Frank Lloyd Wright wrote in 1953 about the learn-by-doing, apprentice-powered campus he began in 1937 that brought his Taliesin Fellowship from Wisconsin to Scottsdale, Arizona. Wright and team then kept busy in the desert. The concrete block 1950 David and Gladys Wright House, built for his son and daughter-in-law, featured a spiralling ramp that was a subtle preview of the Guggenheim Museum, and the dramatic ASU Gammage auditorium debuted in 1964.
Paolo Soleri's sustainable urban experiment Arcosanti
Taliesin West lured an ambitious Italian architect, Paolo Soleri, who in 1970 created his Arcosanti 'arcology' laboratory (a portmanteau for 'architecture' and 'ecology') in Mayer, Arizona. The otherworldly compound remains a preferred off-duty working vacation for architects who participate in the sustainable community’s hands-on workshops (it should be said that Soleri’s daughter accused him of sexual abuse).
Desert modernism's commercial appeal
Modernist aesthetics and twentieth-century capitalism were compatible endeavours, with overlapping interests of efficiency and scale. Automobile-centric retail and commercial strips like Tucson’s Sunshine Mile emerged with ample parking and attention-grabbing neon signage to boot.
Palm Springs Visitor Center formerly tramway gas station
Despite the general inclination towards minimal ornamentation, designers distinguished work in inventive ways. Rudi Baumfeld of Victor Gruen and Associates seized the opportunity for expressive flourishes with the swooping roof line that’s a nod to Le Corbusier’s chapel in Ronchamp, France, at the blue mosaic tile-clad 1959 City National Bank (now a Bank of America branch) on South Palm Canyon Drive.
The future of desert modernism
Architects and builders have amassed enough information at this point in history to design boldly, beautifully, and carefully. Even if desert denizens are used to scorching temperatures and parched surfaces, rising global temperatures, increasingly fragile ecosystems, and threatened plant and animal species require a heightened sensitivity to environmental impacts and effective heat mitigation moves.
Sombra de Santa Fe, a New Mexico house by D U S T that won a Wallpaper* Design Award in 2026 for its earth building techniques
Architects, including Cade Hayes and Jesús Edmundo Robles, Jr. of D U S T, Lake Flato, Jorge Gracia, Benjamin Hall, Marmol Radziner, Sean Lockyer, and Lance O’Donnell - among several others - demonstrate how continually evolving contemporary design sensibilities that value context while embracing both proven ancient and innovative construction methods can yield transcendently beautiful outcomes.
11 key examples of desert modernism
Taliesin West
Who: Frank Lloyd Wright (1937-)
Where: Scottsdale, Arizona
Frank Lloyd Wright’s winter home, workshop, and architecture school has been the site of astounding creativity (and scandal-making drama) since he broke ground and the Fellowship began its work in 1937.
The Institute of Mentalphysics/Joshua Tree Retreat Center
Who: Lloyd Wright (1940s)
Where: Yucca Valley, California
Perhaps no place other than the Institute of Mentalphysics (or the Joshua Tree Retreat Center) better exemplifies California’s history of movements tied to alternative spirituality, what we now call health and wellness, self-reinvention, and the architecture that supported it. The 1940s campus, listed on the National Register of Historic Places, is the largest concentration of buildings by Frank Lloyd Wright, Jr., AKA Lloyd Wright, and features structures by other architects such as Harold Zook.
Lautner Compound
Who: John Lautner (1947)
Where: Desert Hot Springs, California
John Lautner’s complex composed of four contiguous yet internally differentiated units is now available for overnight stays and special events. Lautner’s work eventually became more ambitious with clients who had grander visions and bigger bank accounts. Look no further than the concrete and glass wizardly at the Arthur Elrod House, built in 1968 for Palm Springs’ most famous interior decorator and featured in the 1971 James Bond film Diamonds Are Forever, and the Bob and Dolores Hope House from the late 1970s.
Racquet Club Estates
Who: Palmer & Krisel, Donald Wexler et al. for the Alexander Construction Co. (1960s)
Where: Palm Springs, California
Planned communities like Racquet Club Estates developed by the Alexander Construction Co. represented midcentury aspirations of modern American lifestyles and middle-class leisure.
Frey House II
Who: Albert Frey (1964)
Where: Palm Springs, California
A few decades into his career, Swiss-born Albert Frey confidently used his signature gestures and materials to fashion a home nestled among the boulders and rock outcroppings on a perch above Palm Springs.
Arcosanti
Who: Paolo Soleri (1970-)
Where: Mayer, Arizona
Experimental and experiential living and learning continue at Paolo Soleri’s Arcosanti.
Jacobson House (1975-77)
Who: Judith Chafee
Where: Tucson, Arizona
Judith Chafee returned to her native Tucson after graduating as the sole woman in her Yale School of Architecture class in 1960, and working in the studios of Paul Rudolph, Edward Larabee Barnes, and Eero Saarinen. Far from her profession’s geographic power and prestige base in the Northeast, she synthesised local precedents with her formal training steeped in post-war theory and practice. The result? Singular interpretations of Southwestern residential modernism over the course of Chafee’s under-heralded career.
La Luz del Oeste
Who: Antoine Predock (1967)
Where: Albuquerque, New Mexico
Despite or perhaps because of Antoine Predock’s inclination to engage with polemics related to his region, the Albuquerque-based architect literally designed the 1994 Disney version of a Santa Fe-inspired hotel for the Paris park. The multifamily La Luz del Oeste community reiterates how and why the desert is conducive to questions of context-appropriateness and stylistic idiosyncrasies that resist easy categorisation.
Amangiri
Who: Marwan Al-Sayed/Masastudio, Wendell Burnette and Rick Joy (2009)
Where: Canyon Point, Utah
Desert brutalism arises like an ancient monument from red earth, and here, also, as a coveted ultra-luxury resort in remote southern Utah.
Casa Caldera
Who: D U S T Architects (2015)
Where: San Rafael Valley, Arizona
Tucson-based D U S T Architects homes are meditation and poetry in built form, often constructed out of rammed earth and using hand-built techniques that sit in harmony with sites in Arizona, New Mexico, and West Texas.
Marfa Ranch
Who: Lake Flato (2021)
Where: Marfa, Texas
Lake Flato deftly integrates the colour and material palette of the surrounding Chihuahuan Desert into this house using rammed earth situated on the vast West Texas prairie.