Drawing on California's midcentury legacy, while sprinkling its architecture with contemporary notes and its owner’s personality and needs, this Palm Springs house sits proudly among its arid, rocky landscape; a piece of refreshingly minimalist architecture confidently peeking out from the site’s boulders and cacti. Welcome to Desert Palisades, a new-build family home in the eponymous Palm Springs neighbourhood, designed by Woods + Dangaran.
The Los Angeles architecture studio, which is well versed in translating modernist architecture for the 21st century – see Moore House and Carla Ridge House – is a deft hand at tackling the fine balance between old and new, modern and contemporary. The architects have been known to generate spaces that feel dreamily escapist and at the same time warm and comfortingly domestic – perfect for a 21st-century retreat.
In the case of Desert Palisades, Woods + Dangaran looked at the home’s desert context for inspiration. At the same time, the creation of a piece of architecture that can host daily family life as a holiday home – with all the comfort, spatial generosity and warmth this can suggest – was paramount to the design brief as outlined by Brett Woods, partner in charge for the project, and also the client. In finding the right balance, between old and new, softness and convenience, and the harshness and powerful character of the surrounding Santa Rosa and San Jacinto mountains and the arid climate of the Palm Springs desert, the architecture team worked with a simple, low and linear volume that would contain a finely tuned interior.
The aim was for ‘the interiors to feel desert-like, with sage greens and dusty pinks mixed into sandy, brown tones to create a muted palette that seems to blend in with the desert terrain’, the architects explain. The internal composition features a serene, fairly restrained material and colour palette of natural tones and rich textures, and is arranged in two wings (one with private and one with public aspects of the retreat). Everything sits on a single level, opening up towards the landscape through glazed walls, framing unobstructed, long vistas of the locale. Glass sections alternate with a distinctive patinaed brass on the façade, which makes the building shimmer from a distance, subtly announcing its presence and enticing wanderers to approach.
The house contains four bedrooms, several bathrooms, as well as a large living space. Planting indoors and out is focused on species that are native to the area and can withstand the harsh local summer temperatures. A swimming pool and paved terrace offer alfresco entertaining options – as does many a Palm Springs house, yet this one’s delicate architectural equilibrium ensures it feels distinctly of its time, as well as its place. The combination of clean lines, and mix of glass, masonry walls and metal feel at home in their wider natural and suburban context.
‘This is the anti-Palm Springs house,’ the architects say. ‘It is not overtly midcentury modernist, there is no bright blue pool. It is in the hills, not the flats. This is a different kind of Palm Springs vacation home, while still being extremely of its place.'
INFORMATION
-
Discothèque perfumes evoke the scent of Tokyo in the year 2000As Discothèque gets ready to launch its first perfume collection, Mary Cleary catches up with the brand’s founders
-
This unassuming London house is a radical rethinking of the suburban homeStation Lodge by architect Andrei Saltykov in South West London offers a radical subversion to regional residential architecture
-
Explore 100 years of Svenskt Tenn and the interiors Estrid Ericson has crafted‘A Philosophy of Home’ explores 100 years of Svenskt Tenn and the daring vision for interiors its founder Estrid Ericson developed
-
Gardens & Villas offers the unexpected through ‘deconstructed’ desert living in CaliforniaGardens & Villas, a home in La Quinta, California, brings contemporary luxury to its desert setting through a collaboration between architects Andrew McClure and Christopher McLean
-
First look inside 62 Reade Street, a clock factory turned family home62 Reade Street, a boutique New York residential project by architects ODA, unveils its first apartment interior, styled courtesy of Hovey Design
-
Paul Rudolph at The Met: ‘from Christmas lights to megastructures’‘Materialized Space: The Architecture of Paul Rudolph’ opens at the Met in New York, exploring the modernist master's work through a feast of an exhibition
-
A new exhibition marks Chandigarh’s modernist legacy‘Celebrating the Capitol’, an exhibition of photographic work by architect Noor Dasmesh Singh, opens just in time for the famed modernist Indian city’s anniversary
-
Jewel Box is a Californian project of small scale and big impactJewel Box by Red Dot Studio is the reimagining of a Californian 20th-century gem through a creative addition
-
Join our tour of London Zoo, its modernist architecture and moreLondon Zoo is a well-established magnet for younger visitors, but there's plenty for the architecture enthusiast to admire too; our tour explores its modernist treasures for guests of all ages
-
La Grande Motte: touring the 20th-century modernist dream of a French paradise resortLa Grande Motte and its utopian modernist dreams, as seen through the lens of photographers Laurent Kronental and Charly Broyez, who spectacularly captured the 20th-century resort community in the south of France
-
Germane Barnes exhibition explores notions of classical architecture and identityGermane Barnes exhibition 'Columnar Disorder' opens at the Art Institute of Chicago
