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The result is a striking, sculptural layout resembling a pinwheel with various wings radiating from the central living and dining room. Throughout, there is a strong connection between the indoors and outdoors, reinforced through large swaths of glazing and shade-inducing vertical aluminum louvers that are also one of the home’s highlights. 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. The design and construction of the Kaufmann Desert House fall at an exciting point in American history.
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He employed lightweight steel for the framework, which allowed for slender yet strong supports, and used native stone and glass extensively to enhance the connection to the environment. The integration of these materials was not only aesthetically striking but also functionally significant, aiding in the thermal comfort of the residence through passive cooling techniques that were ahead of their time. When Kaufmann passed away in 1955, the Desert House cycled through several different owners, including Barry Manilow, and significant design changes were implemented to make the Desert House more comfortable for year-round living. Square footage expanded, the courtyard was covered, and air conditioning was added to the roof—but as a consequence of those "improvements," the house began to crumble and lose its soul. The Fredrick Robie House, located in the Chicago neighborhood of Hyde Park, is one of the most iconic examples of modernist architecture. Designed by renowned architect Frank Lloyd Wright in 1909, the house has been called "the most important building of the twentieth century" and "the greatest work of architecture America has produced."
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In fact, the Kaufman, home ended up being Neutra’s most well-known design out of the 300 homes he did. The bold juxtaposition of the modern structure against the desert landscape is a big part of what distinguishes it. When he set out to design the house, the property was quite literally in the middle of nowhere with very few houses nearby. Today, suburbia has grown up around the Kaufman house so tall plantings shield it from neighbors on all sides.
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Throughout the process, they relied on the photos of world-renowned photographer Julius Shulman, who documented the home and shared his work with the restoration team. They also found letters from Neutra to the Kaufmann detailing specifications, materials and sketches, which was a boon to the restoration. Along the way, the team was able to discretely add some modernization, such as air conditioning. Edgar J. Kaufmann, Sr. was a Pittsburgh department store tycoon who commissioned the home in 1946.
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It was one of the last domestic projects conducted by the architect, but it is also arguably one of his most famous homes. One of the most important architects of the 20th Century, yet often overlooked, Richard Neutra has been on the forefront of modern residential architecture. After moving to the United States from Vienna, Austria in 1923, Neutra worked with Frank Lloyd Wright and Rudolf Schindler until 1930 when he started his own practice. 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.
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In June Jean Prouvé’s 1951 Maison Tropicale, a prototype for prefabricated homes for French colonial officials stationed in Africa, sold at Christie’s for $4.97 million. Its prominent features include slatted metal walls, which create breezy indoor-outdoor spaces alongside landscaping with large boulders, cacti, palms and sandy gardens. 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.
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This five-bedroom, five-bathroom vacation house in Palm Springs, California was designed to emphasize connection to the desert landscape while offering shelter from harsh climatic conditions. The Kaufmann House achieved iconic status through its architectural innovation and the lens of Julius Shulman, one of the most influential architectural photographers of the 20th century. Shulman’s photographs of the house, particularly the striking image taken at twilight with the interior lit and the pool reflecting the house and sky, have become defining images of modernist architecture.
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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. It wasn’t until 1993, when Brent and Beth Harris, a financial executive and an architectural historian, moved in that there was an attempt to bring the Neutra house back to its original splendor piece by piece. I was fortunate to travel to the Louvre in 2012 and spent multiple days at the museum. Many architects used this common strategy, notably Neutra’s mentor Frank Lloyd Wright.
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His realtor indicated that although the location and the site of the Kaufmann house were spectacular, the house itself was no longer considered valuable and the property was being sold (ultimately at $1.5 million) as a tear-down. Alternatively, according to the listing agent, "it could easily be made more stylish by converting it to a Spanish style." At this point, Beth and Brent Harris decided to purchase and restore the house. In 1923 he moved to the US, where he worked with Frank Lloyd Wright and close friend Rudolf Schindler. Neutra started his own practice in 1930, where he designed many Californian homes based around simple geometry, clean lines and airy construction. The house in Palm Springs is predominantly oriented east-west, maximising sunrise and sunset views.
The ABCs of Midcentury Modern Architecture in Palm Springs - Palm Springs Life
The ABCs of Midcentury Modern Architecture in Palm Springs.
Posted: Tue, 30 Jan 2024 08:00:00 GMT [source]
In the Kaufmann House, this is done with walls that run from the interior to the exterior clad in the same stone material. This technique allows the eye to travel from the inside to the outside with minimal interruption, visually connecting the two spaces. Atop the house, which is composed of floating planes, Neutra was able to get around the local ban on two-story homes by designing a “gloriette” with a cover and devices to provide shade on two sides. The natural stone from Utah who Neutra used in the exterior and interior creates a vivid chiaroscuro effect that is difference in the smoothness in other finishes. However, the stone is carefully chiseled, both in the original house, for which Neutra trained masons who had worked in Falling Water, who had come Kaufmann, as in the restoration carried out by the new owners by mid in the 90s and lasted five years. The garden permeates almost inadvertently throughout the house with smooth oscillations.
The one-story structure has a pinwheel floor plan centered around the living room with a floor-to-ceiling fireplace, and the master suite, additional bedrooms, and a service wing oriented as branches. A roofed but open-air room he called the “Gloriette” (from 12th-century French for little room) was Neutra’s way of working around local building restrictions that forbade two-story structures. Flanked by movable aluminum louvers, the design helped shelter the home from wind and sandstorms. 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.
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