Kaufmann Desert House
From Archiplanet
 | Kaufmann Desert House |
| Designer | Richard Neutra |
| Location | Palm Springs, California, USA |
| Date | 1946 |
| Building Type | house |
| Climate | desert |
| Context | suburban |
| Architectural Style | California Modern |
| Street Address | 470 West Vista Chino |
| Notes | Flat roofs, opening onto paved courtyard areas. |
| At Great Buildings | http://www.GreatBuildings.com/buildings/Kaufmann_Desert_House.html |
Contents |
[edit] Images
[edit] Discussion
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. Large sliding glass walls open the living spaces and master bedroom to adjacent patios. Major outdoor rooms are enclosed by a row of movable vertical fins that offer flexible protection against sandstorms and intense heat.
A combined living and dining space, roughly square, lies at the center of the house. While the house favors an east-west axis, four long perpendicular wings extend in each cardinal direction from the living areas. Thoughtful placement of larger rooms at the end of each wing helps define adjacent outdoor rooms, with circulation occurring both indoors and out.
The south wing connects to the public realm and includes a carport and two long covered walkways. These walkways are separated by a massive stone wall and lead to public and service entries, respectively. The east wing of the house is connected to the living space by a north-facing internal gallery and houses a master bedroom suite. To the west, a kitchen, service spaces, and staff quarters are reached by a covered breezeway. In the northern wing, another open walkway passes along an exterior patio, leading to two guest rooms.
Commentary
"The Kaufmann house, Palm Springs, 1946, moved in the direction of the pavilion, which is Neutra's last development in domestic architecture. Horizontal planes resting on horizontal planes hover over transparent walls. The material loses its importance—magnificent as the dry-joint stone walls are in themselves—and the gist of the house is the weightless space enclosed. The victory over the front door is almost complete; it is reached by slow stages, like the Mexican house whose entrance on the street leads through a garden to an unemphasized door."
— Esther McCoy. Richard Neutra. p16-17.
The Creator's Words
"As an architect, my life has been governed by the goal of building environmental harmony, functional efficiency, and human enhancement into the experience of everyday living. These things go together, constituting the cause of architecture, and a life devoted to their realization cannot be an easy one.
"I have been privileged, or perhaps doomed, to eschew simpler, lighter burdens. Shaping man's surroundings entails a lot more than spatial, structural, mechanical, and other technical considerations—certainly a lot more than pontificating about matters of style. Our organic well-being is dependent on a wholesome, salubrious environment. Therefore exacting attention has to be paid to our intricate sensory world."
— Richard Neutra. from William Marlin, ed. Nature Near: late essays of Richard Neutra. p1-2.
[edit] Maps
[edit] General Overview
Kaufmann Desert House
The Kaufmann House, or Kaufmann Desert House, in Palm Springs, California, was designed by Richard Neutra in 1946.
It was one of the last domestic projects conducted by the architect, but it is also arguably one of his most famous homes.
It is "one of the most important examples of International Style architecture in the United States and the only one still in private hands," and was recently up for sale.
Description
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. Large sliding glass walls open the living spaces and master bedroom to adjacent patios. Major outdoor rooms are enclosed by a row of movable vertical fins that offer flexible protection against sandstorms and intense heat.
A combined living and dining space, roughly square, lies at the center of the house. While the house favors an east-west axis, four long perpendicular wings extend in each cardinal direction from the living areas. Thoughtful placement of larger rooms at the end of each wing helps define adjacent outdoor rooms, with circulation occurring both indoors and out.
The south wing connects to the public realm and includes a carport and two long covered walkways. These walkways are separated by a massive stone wall and lead to public and service entries, respectively. The east wing of the house is connected to the living space by a north-facing internal gallery and houses a master bedroom suite. To the west, a kitchen, service spaces, and staff quarters are reached by a covered breezeway. In the northern wing, another open walkway passes along an exterior patio, leading to two guest rooms.
History
The home was commissioned by Edgar J. Kaufmann Sr., a Pittsburgh department store tycoon as a desert retreat from harsh winters. It was made famous by the 1947 photos by Julius Shulman.Edward Wyatt, A Landmark Modernist House Heads to Auction, The New York Times, October 31, 2007. A decade earlier, Kaufmann commissioned Frank Lloyd Wright to build Fallingwater in Pennsylvania.
After Kaufmann died in 1955, the house stood vacant for several years. It then had a series of owners, including singer Barry Manilow, San Diego Chargers owner Eugene V. Klein Willian Avila, Kaufmann House sells for $15 million, The Desert Sun, May 14, 2008 and had several renovations. These renovations enclosed a patio, added floral wallpaper to the bedrooms and removed a wall for the addition of a media room; additionally the roof lines were altered with the addition of air conditioning units. In 1992 the home was discovered and purchased by a married couple: Brent Harris, an investment manager, and Beth Edwards Harris, an architectural historian; at the time it had been for sale on the market three and a half years.Edward Wyatt, A Landmark Modernist House Heads to Auction, The New York Times, October 31, 2007.
The Harrises purchased the home for $1.5 million, then sought to restore the home to its original design. Neutra died in 1970 and the original plans were not available, so the couple brought in Los Angeles architects [Leo Marmol and Ron Radziner]http://www.marmol-radziner.com to restore the design. For clues to the original design, the Harrises looked through the extensive Neutra archives at UCLA, found additional documents through Columbia University and were able to work with Shulman to access some of his never-printed photos of the home's interior. They were able to obtain pieces from the original suppliers of paint and fixtures; and they purchased a metal-crimping machine to reproduce the sheet-metal fascia that lined the roof. Additionally, the Harrises were able to have a long-closed section of a Utah quarry re-opened to mine matching stone to replace what had been removed or damaged. To help restore the desert buffer Neutra had envisioned for the house, the Harrises also bought several adjoining plots to more than double the land around the house. They rebuilt a pool house that serves as a viewing pavilion for the main house, and kept a tennis court that was built on a parcel added to the original Kaufmann property.Edward Wyatt, A Landmark Modernist House Heads to Auction, The New York Times, October 31, 2007.
After the Harrises divorced, the home was supposedly sold on May 13, 2008 for $15 million at auction by Christie's as a part of a high-profile sale of contemporary art.Willian Avila, Kaufmann House sells for $15 million, The Desert Sun, May 14, 2008; The house had a presale estimate of $15 million to $25 million.Edward Wyatt, A Landmark Modernist House Heads to Auction, The New York Times, October 31, 2007. The sale later fell through, as the bidder breached terms of the purchase agreement *[1].
In October 2008, the house was listed for sale at 12.95 million.
The restoration by Marmol Radziner + Associates was critically lauded.Edward Wyatt, A Landmark Modernist House Heads to Auction, The New York Times, October 31, 2007. Today, most critics place the Kaufmann House amongst the 'five most important houses of the 20th century', with the likes of Fallingwater, Robie House, Gropius House and the Gamble House, all located in the United States.DESERT MODERNISM TOP 20
The Kaufmann house was included in a list of all time top 10 houses in Los Angeles, despite its being in Palm Springs, in a Los Angeles Times survey of experts in December 2008.
References
External links
- Great Buildings Online - Kaufman Desert House
- Archiplanet - Information & Discussion Pages
- Arcaid - 20 Color Photographs
- Desert Modernism - Top 20 Homes
- Two photos of Kaufmann house within LATimes photo essay by Sean Mitchell, cited above
[edit] References
Francis D. K. Ching. Architecture: Form, Space, and Order. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1979. ISBN 0-442-21535-5. LC 79-18045. NA2760.C46. eye-level exterior perspective, p101. plan, p229.— A nice graphic introduction to architectural ideas. Updated 1996 edition available at Amazon.com
Thomas S.Hines. Richard Neutra and the Search for Modern Architecture. New York: Oxford University Press. 1982. Exterior photograph of rear facade, f250, p211. Exterior photograph of rear facade, f284, p209.
John Julius Norwich, ed. Great Architecture of the World. London: Mitchell Beazley Publishers, 1975. small exterior photo, p255.Reprint edition: Da Capo Press, April 1991. ISBN 0-3068-0436-0. — An accessible, inspiring and informative overview of world architecture, with lots of full-color cutaway drawings, and clear explanations. Available at Amazon.com
Dennis Sharp. Twentieth Century Architecture: a Visual History. New York: Facts on File, 1990. ISBN 0-8160-2438-3. NA680.S517. exterior photo at dusk, plan drawing, p164. — Available at Amazon.com
[edit] External Links
- Kaufmann Desert House at Wikipedia
- 20 Color photographs at Arcaid
- Kaufmann House Precedent Study - Student precedent study (Chinese).
- Kaufmann House Precedent Study - Student precedent study (Portugese).
- Kaufmann House Drawings - Student drawing package available for purchase from Neutra Institute for Survival Through Design.
