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Her former husband Brent also continues to actively support preservation activities in Palm Springs and is currently restoring a Welton Becket-designed home in the historic Tennis Club neighborhood. The house’s swimming pool is one of the most iconic and recognizable aspects of the Kaufmann House; however, it is not solely a photographic gem or simply a recreational feature. The swimming pool creates a compositional balance of the overall design of the house. The house alone is unbalanced and heavy as the wings are not equally proportioned, but with the addition and placement of the swimming pool there is a cohesive balance and harmony throughout the design.
Modernist architectural marvel made famous by Slim Aarons for sale for $25m
A decade earlier, Kaufmann commissioned Frank Lloyd Wright to build Fallingwater in Pennsylvania. 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. So exacting were the standards of the owners and architects that when, in the course of the restoration, a missing stone wall had to be reconstructed a defunct Utah sandstone quarry was re-opened to secure matching stone.
Timeline
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. The south wing comprises two covered walkways separated by a massive stone wall, while another open path leads north past a patio to a pair of guest bedrooms. 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.
The Dwell House Is a Modern Prefab ADU Delivered to Your Backyard
Even for a home this steeped in history, architectural and otherwise, the $25 million price tag is steep; if the Kaufmann house goes for anything close to that it would be the most expensive sale in Palm Springs history. The current record belongs to the Bob Hope estate, a volcano-inspired John Lautner design that sold for $13 million in 2016. The couple enlisted Los Angeles architects Leo Marmol and Ron Radziner to restore the property.
The off-market deal comes a year and a half after the property was first listed for $25 million. Kaufmann was no stranger to big-name architects — a decade before, he’d commissioned Frank Lloyd Wright to build the Fallingwater, about 60 miles southeast of his hometown of Pittsburgh. And while he considered Wright for his California project, Kaufmann didn’t want this home to blend into its environment.
Thanks also to its association with Gene and Jackie Autry, who purchased it in the late 1990s and whose furnishings were included with the sale, the nearly 1 ½-acre compound is among the city’s largest, both in stature and legend. One often-misunderstood aspect of restoration is that you can’t simply remake everything the way it was in 1947. It’s more a question of what Harris calls an “intervention,” in which he uses modern methods and technologies in hidden or unobtrusive ways to protect the house from the elements.
Eight home interiors where mezzanines maximise usable space
The site for the Kaufmann Desert House was positioned southeast of a high mountain range, with views opening eastward towards the desert landscape. The lot was roughly 200 by 300 feet and, at the time, was barren with very few surrounding structures. Today a suburban neighborhood surrounds the house, and the lot is almost entirely enclosed at its perimeter by tall shrubs.
The stucco and steel home featured floor-to-ceiling windows and screens that brought the seemingly endless expanse of desert to the front door. After entering the house, to the right is the dining and main living spaces with views eastward out to the pool. Northeast of the living space is the primary suite, slightly offset from the central axis to provide privacy for the bedroom and open the view for the living space. Neutra used as basic materials stone, glass and steel, and tended not to depart from the range of colors than the desert offered, so that the house does not desentonase of their natural environment.
Five Things You Should Know About the Kaufmann Desert House
In the absence of Neutra’s original plans, the Harrises turned to the prominent "desert modernist" architect Albert Frey for his expertise, and they hired Los Angeles–based Marmol Radziner, the firm that had recently spruced up Neutra’s Kun House #2 near Laurel Canyon. The north wing is the guest’s quarters that are publicly accessible, but retain their private needs as they are separated from the rest of the house. The west wing of the house is the service wing, which is fairly secluded from the rest of the open plan design. The east wing is the most privatized aspect of the house as it is the Kaufmann’s master suite. Richard Neutra, a Vienna-born architect, brought a unique blend of European modernism and Californian innovation to his projects. By the time Kaufmann approached him, Neutra had already established himself as a pioneer in modernist architecture, known for his meticulous attention to detail and his philosophy of “biorealism,” which emphasized the health and wellbeing of the occupants through design.
From the street, the house looks beautifully layered with floating planes that rise in elevation as you move west. Wanting to capture more views at a higher elevation, Neutra designed the gloriette as an open-air perch on top of the house, covered by a roof and shading devices on two sides. Integrating outdoor living spaces and balconies was a consistent theme in Neutra’s past work. The gloriette is accessed from an outdoor flight of stairs that touches down in the central courtyard.
“Poolside Gossip” Home Sells for Palm Springs Record - The Real Deal
“Poolside Gossip” Home Sells for Palm Springs Record.
Posted: Fri, 06 May 2022 07:00:00 GMT [source]
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The house sold for $19.1m, but the sale fell through, according to Palm Springs Life. The home’s significance is compounded by prominent former owners, including Barry Manilow and the person for whom the home was built—Edgar J. Kaufmann Sr., who was also the first owner of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater home. The sale of the property has set a new record for Palm Springs real estate, knocking off the $13 million sale of Bob Hope’s former home in 2016.
Moreover, the presence of patios and porches in the housing connects the interior and exterior, so that the desert seems to be taking part in the same building. Julius Shulman's photographs played an important role in establishing the Kaufmann residence as one of the nation's most iconic modernist houses. Upon completion of the Kaufmann house, Neutra gave Shulman explicit instructions about how he wished the building to be photographed, suggesting dusk and evening shots that looked back into the illuminated interior. The resulting time-lapse photo is famous, not only for the multiple images of the running "ghost" puppy, but also for Shulman's request that Lilliane position herself on a mat to block the pool light from over-exposing the photo. Designed by local modernist William F. Cody, the Linsk addition was compatible and relatively seamless, but removed the glass corridor to the master bedroom and drastically reduced the amount of light to the interior. Modernist furnishings selected by Neutra were replaced with those chosen by prominent Palm Springs interior designer Arthur Elrod.
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