Table Of Content
- Materials and Tags
- Eight mid-century houses that prove Palm Springs is a modernist mecca
- The Dwell House Is a Modern Prefab ADU Delivered to Your Backyard
- richard neutra's iconic kaufmann desert house in palm springs is for sale
- residential architecture and interiors (
- Kaufmann House; Richard Neutra's Iconic Palm Springs Desert Modern Design

The flow from interior to exterior space is not simply a spatial condition rather it is an issue of materiality that creates the sinuous experience. The glass and steel make the house light, airy, and open, but it is the use of stone that solidifies the houses contextual relationship. The light colored, dry set stone, what Neutra calls “Utah buff,” brings out the qualities of the glass and steel, but it also blends into the earthy tones of the surrounding landscape of the stone, mountains, and trees. The floating effect is emphasized through a series of sliding glass doors that open up to cover walkways or patios. The way in which Neutra designed the Kaufmann House was such that when the sliding glass doors were opened the differentiation of interior and exterior was blurred as if it was a sinuous space. After seeing Wright’s Taliesin West, Kaufmann was unimpressed and gave his commission to Richard Neutra.
Materials and Tags
From prehistoric structures to contemporary architecture, we can see what was important to humans at the time and what were they trying to say through their buildings. The decision to build the bedrooms and courtyards a spiral, reveals a specific social order. An extreme privacy is guaranteed both to the hosts, as the children, guests, and servants. The only coexistence between them occurs in the shaded walkways, terraces and courtyards.
Eight mid-century houses that prove Palm Springs is a modernist mecca
Additionally, they more than doubled the property size by purchasing several adjacent properties to add to the Kaufmann property and brought it to Neutra’s initial vision. 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. In 2003 Sotheby’s sold the 1951 Farnsworth House southwest of Chicago, designed by Mies van der Rohe, at auction for $7.5 million.
The Dwell House Is a Modern Prefab ADU Delivered to Your Backyard
The Kaufmann House is an early example, and one of the clearest, of a post–World War II southern Californian modernism that closely integrates the building with its environment. For Neutra, however, the house also symbolized a universal type of dwelling for difficult-to-settle environments. The Kaufmann House has gone through several owners after the Kaufmann’s owned the house, which led to the house to fall in disrepair and a lack of concern and preservation of the modern dwelling. However, a couple that appreciated 20th Century modern homes restored the house back to its original luster with the help of Julius Shulman.
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. 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. • Kaufmann House, originally designed in 1946 by architect Richard Neutra, was built for the same client who commissioned Falling Water by Frank Lloyd Wright.
richard neutra's iconic kaufmann desert house in palm springs is for sale
How Neutra’s Kaufmann House Got Its Groove Back - Dwell
How Neutra’s Kaufmann House Got Its Groove Back.
Posted: Wed, 13 Mar 2019 07:00:00 GMT [source]
The tour was fascinating in its detail, but Beth's personal recollections left the most lasting impression. Even before my first visit to Palm Springs, the building I most wanted to see was Richard Neutra's Edgar Kaufmann Residence. I knew the 1947 photos of the house by architectural photographer Julius Shulman which are among most famous and widely known architectural images of all time. Architectural historian John Crosse assembled an 82-page bibliography citing over 150 published articles on the house (most accompanied by Shulman photos) beginning with the house's completion through Neutra's death in 1970. But the house settled into obscurity with only 70 articles published about it after 1970 until the house was purchased and restored by Beth and Brent Harris in 1993.
residential architecture and interiors (
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. A decade earlier he employed well-known architect Frank Lloyd Wright to build his Pittsburgh home known as Fallingwater. The pending sale is bittersweet for the current owners, who said they planned to give a portion of the proceeds to preservation groups. Asked how it felt to be close to selling the property, Dr. Harris looked back at the house, blinking away tears. In 1996, the house was designated a historic site by the Palm Springs Historic Site Preservation Board. It remains a private residence, but nonetheless features as a stop on architecture tours of the city, when it can be glimpsed from the street.
As you approach the home, boulders flank the entrance to Kaufmann House, which has been described as having the look of an open-air desert pavilion. Instead of today’s style of grand entrances, Neutra used the then-popular device of creating a progression to the doorway, which is understated. The low-profile home has 3,162 square feet of living space and is arranged in a cross configuration. At its center, the open-plan living and dining room is designed to take in both sunsets and sunrises with its east-west orientation.
Kaufmann House; Richard Neutra's Iconic Palm Springs Desert Modern Design
The lounge area, shared with the dining room and more or less square, is at the center of the house. The plan in the form of cross guarantees that the four wings get both daylight and good ventilation. As in his own home, Neutra skillfully dodged the ban on building a second height, eliminating the walls of the roundabout, except for the chimney and the vertical sheets of aluminum.

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. 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. A symphony of steel, glass, sandstone and stucco, it exemplifies California living with terrazzo flooring, mountain views and the famed central swimming pool.
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. 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. Since the 1920s, the city, situated at the foot of Mount San Jacinto, offered refuge to the stars of Hollywood.
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. Unfortunately, only glimpses of it can be seen from the street including its famous ‘gloriette’ roof deck. Weekly updates on the latest design and architecture vacancies advertised on Dezeen Jobs. Daily updates on the latest design and architecture vacancies advertised on Dezeen Jobs.
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. Neutra tended toward the new “international style” of buildings (with plenty of airiness and rectangles), which Kaufmann felt would stand out in the desert and surrounding San Jacinto Mountains. The home is a one-story structure that subtly accommodates itself to the site by stepping up slightly on three levels, made more dramatic through the introduction of a roofed (but otherwise open-air) second floor room.
These photographs do more than merely document the structure; they encapsulate Neutra’s vision of blending architecture with its environment, creating a visual narrative that communicates the essence of modernism to a global audience. Shulman’s ability to capture the elegance and tranquil beauty of the Kaufmann House helped cement its place in architectural history and inspired a generation of architects and designers to embrace the principles of modernism. From the street, the house looks beautifully layered with floating planes that rise in elevation as you move west.
Doe can hardly blame the enthusiasts, even those who, in the current downturn in the housing market, can barely afford their own houses, much less the former vacation house of Pittsburgh department store magnate Edgar J. Kaufmann. The much-photographed 1946 masterwork by architect Richard Neutra might be the happiest marriage of the abstract geometry of modern architecture with the desert-and-mountain landscape of Palm Springs. 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.
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