Kaufmann Desert House
Neutra, Richard Joseph
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Date
1946Description
View looking to West Vista Chino Road; landscaping (xeriscaping) hides house from street, merges house to desert landscape; One of the last domestic projects conducted by Neutra, designed for the same family (Edgar J. Kaufmann Sr., a Pittsburgh department store tycoon) who commissioned Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater in Pennsylvania. The five-bedroom, five-bathroom vacation house, 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. When Kaufmann died in 1955, the house was vacant for a number of years, then underwent some remodeling. In 1991 new owners 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 to restore the design. They consulted archives at UCLA and Columbia and the 1947 photographs by Julius Shulman, which had made the house famous. Source: Wikipedia; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page (accessed 7/18/2014)
Type of Work
houseSubject
architecture, Restoration and conservation, Xeriscaping, Twentieth century, California Modernism, International Style (modern European architecture style)
Rights
Rights Statement
Licensed for educational and research use by the MIT community only