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- View all galleries in Construction technologies
- Richard Neutra – Palm Springs-California USA, 1946
- Eight chocolate-brown interiors that look good enough to eat
- About Kaufmann House design and construction.
- For a Cool $25 Million, You Can Buy Richard Neutra’s Most Famous Palm Springs Home
- The author, Richard Neutra
The north and south wings are the most public parts of the house that connect to the central living area. The south wing consists of a covered walkway that leads from the center of the house to the carport. Twenty-five million dollars is certainly a hefty price tag, but then again, the buyer is stepping back into the past, into a profound moment of architectural history. Consider the second-story, open-air gloriette—a French word translating to "little glory"—where views of the San Jacinto Mountains are particularly heady. Multiple levels were forbidden when Neutra was building the Desert Kaufmann House, but the gloriette, reached via an outdoor staircase, is a clever workaround—just one of Neutra’s subtle innovations.
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The Kaufmann Desert House is arranged like a pinwheel, with various wings radiating from the central living and dining room. Vertical aluminum louvers, providing protection against the harsh desert heat, are also a striking design feature of the Kaufmann Desert House. “In 2023, California had only 24 units of housing available and affordable for every 100 extremely low-income households,” BHHI researchers noted in a recent study. The latest federal estimates show more than 181,000 Californians were unhoused in 2023, with nearly 70% living on the streets. “It’s at this point during a home tour that I pull out the Slim Aarons “Poolside Gossip” photo.
Richard Neutra – Palm Springs-California USA, 1946
The Untold Darkness Inside the Bright Palm Springs Kaufmann House - Palm Springs Life
The Untold Darkness Inside the Bright Palm Springs Kaufmann House.
Posted: Sat, 28 Jan 2023 08:00:00 GMT [source]
The house has a cross-shaped plan, with a square living and dining room at the centre, and wings that extend out in cardinal directions. To the west is a kitchen and service rooms, accessed by a covered breezeway, with a master bedroom to the east. Since then, the house has had more than one famous owner, and has gone through a few renovations.
Eight chocolate-brown interiors that look good enough to eat
In 1996, it was the twentieth building to be designated as a protected local landmark and is believed to be the first private property to be selected as such. The Kaufmann Desert House was saved in 1992 when it was discovered again by a married couple named Brent and Beth Harris. Brent, an investment banker, and Beth, an architectural historian, found the house was for sale when Beth had snuck onto the property to take a closer look at the historic landmark. The original plans for the property had never been replicated and Neutra had died in 1970, so they went on a journey to restore it back to its original glory. Edgar J. Kaufmann, Sr. was a Pittsburgh department store tycoon who commissioned the home in 1946.
About Kaufmann House design and construction.
Key architectural features of the Kaufmann House include its flat, extending rooflines that provide shade and cooling in the desert heat and its expansive glass walls, which dissolve the barriers between indoors and the natural world outside. The use of sliding glass doors and moveable wall panels allows the living spaces to be entirely open to the outdoors, a revolutionary concept emphasizing the therapeutic benefits of living in close contact with nature. The Kaufmann House was designed and built when American architecture was undergoing significant transformation.
A Landmark Modernist House Heads to Auction
And each time, any potential buyer will go ‘Ahhh, yes.’ It’s the defining view of the house,” says Bisignano. And to give the open look and feel of the home’s bolder-strewn grounds back in 1947, the Harrises bought several adjoining lots to more than double the size of the homesite to 2.18 acres. “I think more than 300 magazine articles have been written about this truly remarkable restoration. It set the gold standard for the renovation of a landmark property like this,” explains Bisignano. Here, we spotlight the stunning Kaufmann Desert House located in Palm Springs, California, as part of The National's International Property of the Week series. The Kaufmann Desert House inspired the work of famed architectural photographer Julius Shulman and Slim Aarons, who was known for his images of the American high life.
In 1992 it was bought and renovated to its original design by couple Brent Harris, an investment manager, and Beth Edwards Harris, an architectural historian. Designed by Richard Neutra, considered one of the most influential Modernist architects of the 20th century, the Kaufmann Desert House was originally commissioned and owned by Pittsburgh department store owner Edgar J Kaufmann, Sr. The property was built in 1946 as somewhere to retreat to during the cold Pennsylvania winters.
After the Harrises divorced, the home was supposedly sold on May 13, 2008, for US$15 million at auction by Christie's as a part of a high-profile sale of contemporary art. The sale later fell through, as the bidder breached terms of the purchase agreement. During the extensive renovation by Marmol Radziner in the 1990s, the original concrete and silica sand floors were patched. Neutra’s International Style architecture is heightened by the San Jacinto Mountains above.
The Dwell House Is a Modern Prefab ADU Delivered to Your Backyard
He purchased the house, for $1.5 million, back in 1993 with his then-wife and architectural historian, Beth Harris. No home defines the mid-century modern movement more than architect Richard Neutra‘s iconic Kaufmann Desert House in sun-drenched Palm Springs, California. Inside, there are five bedrooms, six full bathrooms and a media room, which was added in the 1990s. No other building has been referred to or echoed in architecture more than the Pantheon.
Wright was very offended at his choice, but Kaufmann was looking for something that fit his new desert landscape and felt Neutra would be a stronger choice. The main outdoor rooms are enclosed by a vertical aluminum fins that offer flexible protection against sandstorms and intense heat. In the west wing there is a kitchen, service spaces and rooms for staff which can be reached by a deck “breezway”. A decade after Edgar Kaufmann hired Frank Lloyd Wright to design the famous Fallingwater House in Bear Run, PA, the same Kaufmann wanted to build a house on the West Coast. But Dr. Harris, who worked toward her doctorate in architectural history while restoring the Kaufmann House, said she believed an auction would further the preservationist cause. The property was also enlarged to suit Neutra's vision for a desert retreat, and replacement stonework was mined from a quarry in Utah to match the original construction.
Located in Palm Springs, the property boasts mountain views and has a swimming pool on its 0.9 hectare plot. 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. Before the invention and widespread use of photography in the architectural industry, people had to visit buildings to see and experience them. As photography became more available, magazines, publications, and printed media became the primary way people would consume architecture. The design and construction of the Kaufmann Desert House fall at an exciting point in American history.
They were able to obtain pieces from the original suppliers of paint and fixtures, and purchased a metal-crimping machine to reproduce the sheet-metal fascia that lined the roof. A unique feature of the house is its second-floor, open-air covered patio—designed by Neutra as a way of getting around strict local building regulations that, at the time, restricted home construction to a single level. Julius Shulman’s photographs, mainly the dusk shot from the southeast overlooking the pool with the mountains in the background, allowed people worldwide to view the house. The large amount of publicity surrounding the Kaufmann House constituted a turning point in the marketing and consumption of architecture and lifestyle. Those owners, Brent Harris, an investment manager, and Beth Edwards Harris, an architectural historian, are finalizing their divorce, and plan to auction the Kaufmann House at Christie’s in New York in May. The building, with a presale estimate of $15 million to $25 million, will be part of Christie’s high-profile evening sale of postwar and contemporary art.
Behind the sandstone-faced wall Neutra placed a car garage and a secondary entrance into the western wing of the house, which contained the service spaces and servant quarters furthest west. Kaufmann, a notorious womanizer, completed the desert house as his marriage disintegrated. In the early 1950's, Liliane Kaufmann commissioned Wright to design another house in Palm Springs on the north side of the property where the Neutra house sits. Named "Boulder House," as confirmed by Edgar Kaufmann Jr. in his book "Fallingwater Rising" this commission was to be a home for Liliane Kaufmann who could no longer live with her philandering husband. It is said that Wright put both Edgar and Lilianne's names on the rendering in a vain attempt to regain Edgar's patronage.
Its prominent features include slatted metal walls, which create breezy indoor-outdoor spaces alongside landscaping with large boulders, cacti, palms and sandy gardens. Many of the walls of the structure are made of floor-to-ceiling glass, allowing for untrammeled views of the desert scenery. The design of the house is quite simplistic; at the center of the house is the living room and the dining room that is the heart of the house and the family activity. The rest of the house branches out like a pinwheel in each of the cardinal directions. From the center of the house each wing that branches out has its own specific function; however, the most important aspects of the house are oriented east/west while the supporting features are oriented north/south.
The surface of the home is composed of sandy-colored Utah stone and floor to ceiling windows, which promotes an even more feeling of a sinuous space. Arguably one of the most admired aspects of the home, however, is the swimming pool. The pool adds a certain fluidity to the overall design of the property, balancing the heaviness of the home with its uneven wing sizes. The house was initially built with a pool house, which has now been replaced with a pavilion that serves as a convenient entertainment center and kitchen. To give greater visibility to the renowned quality of “floating” in the design, the structural system combines wood and steel so that the amount of vertical supports necessary, limited in any case, is reduced.
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.
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