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Richard Neutra, an emblematic figure of 20th-century Architecture, excelled in blending technology, aesthetics, and the nuances of the natural environment into his designs. Among his illustrious works, the Kaufmann House in Palm Springs, California, is the quintessential example of his approach to modernist architecture. The floating effect is emphasized through a series of sliding glass doors that open up to cover walkways or patios.
The Hidden History of the Kaufmann House
The unique sharp vertical feature is the chimney located next to the “public square”, as Neutra called it. Those owners, Brent Harris, an investment manager, and Beth Edwards Harris, an architectural historian, are finalizing their divorce, and plan to auction the Kaufmann House at Christie’s in New York in May. The building, with a presale estimate of $15 million to $25 million, will be part of Christie’s high-profile evening sale of postwar and contemporary art. When the Harrises decided to end their marriage, they faced a dilemma regarding the disposition of the house. Both were clear that the house required a special buyer who would fully appreciate its cultural significance and provide the kind of maintenance such a property requires.
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Spaces
I arrived at the former Ayeroff Brothers store, on La Cienega, to find that it had just been knocked down for a residential development. ” Increasingly, the article implied, the neighbors were envious, rather than scornful, of the Neutra on the block. That same year, Life published one of Julius Shulman’s now legendary photographs of the Kaufmann House—a dream vision of postwar leisure, with Liliane Kaufmann lounging by the pool as the Palm Springs sun sets behind desert mountains. In this same period, John Entenza, the editor of the magazine Arts & Architecture, launched the Case Study program, featuring designs for model progressive homes. Neutra, rigorously trained in engineering, made the Health House a tour-de-force demonstration of his skills. In effect, he served not only as the architect but also as the contractor and the site manager.
AD Classics: Kaufmann House / Richard Neutra
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 3,200-square-foot (300 m2) 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. The garden permeates almost inadvertently throughout the house with smooth oscillations.
Commissioned by Edgar J. Kaufmann Sr., the Pittsburgh department store magnate who had commissioned Frank Lloyd Wright about a decade earlier to build Fallingwater in Pennsylvania, the house was designed as a desert retreat from harsh winters. Constructed as a series of horizontal planes that seem to float over glass walls, the house seems to absorb the mood of the surrounding desert. 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. The first batch of stone that arrived was not a perfect match, but a second quarry did the trick.
From this angle, the structure looks more like an open-air desert pavilion than a home. It is one of the most important examples of International Style architecture in the United States and the only one still in private hands. The home was commissioned by Edgar J. Kaufmann Sr., a Pittsburgh department store tycoon as a desert retreat from harsh winters.
The Desert House stands in the northern part of Palm Springs, where the lower slopes of Mount Jacinto meet the plain of the Coachella Valley. Neutra responded to the flat site with a pinwheel floor plan whose four wings follow the cardinal directions. The house is entered through the southern wing, which is oriented perpendicular to the street. The spaces of the entrance passage hint at recurring design themes of the house.
Richard Neutra’s Architectural Vanishing Act
Asked how it felt to be close to selling the property, Dr. Harris looked back at the house, blinking away tears. While Beth Harris may have moved to Los Angeles, many feel her heart has stayed behind in Palm Springs. She continues to promote architectural education through her work with the California Preservation Foundation, and as a major donor to the emerging Palm Springs Art Museum's Architecture & Design Center, named the Edwards Harris Pavilion in her honor. 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.
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Timeline
Perhaps the finest of his public buildings is the Claremont United Methodist Church, where the San Gabriel Mountains are framed by plate-glass windows behind the altar. Neutra office complexes, medical facilities, and storefronts are scattered around Southern California, ranging in appearance from the nondescript to the decrepit. The Hughes Auto Showroom, in Toluca Lake, now houses Universal Smog and Repair, which looks drab but gets good reviews on Yelp.
Some critics would rank him below Rudolph Schindler, the other great Austrian modernist in Los Angeles, who helped bring Neutra to the city and later fell out with him. Neutra left behind no signature landmark on the order of the Guggenheim Museum or the Salk Institute. One project in which he invested particularly high hopes—a public-housing complex called Elysian Park Heights—stirred reactionary ire in the fifties, and was never built. Yet the fact that Neutra did his best work in domestic spaces should not detract from his significance.
With a copy of Thomas S. Hines’s authoritative 1982 book, “Richard Neutra and the Search for Modern Architecture,” seeking out more than a hundred local structures. I spoke to several original owners, ranging in age from eighty-four to a hundred and two. 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. The plan leaves spaces for the courtyards on the periphery of the plan, creating a system of privacy appropriate to the specific occupant in the space; hosts, children, guests, servants, etc. The living and bedroom spaces are organized around a circulation system with terraces, courtyards, and walkways that tie the arms back into the central living room and serve as paths allowing different social groups to interact within the center of the house.
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.
When the windscreens are not required, louvers can be adjusted to open up to the views. The Los Angeles Times and its panel of experts named it one of the best houses of all time in southern California in 2008. Neutra’s sleek glass, steel and Utah stone design was considered radical at the time, paving the way for the west coast concept of “indoor outdoor” living. At the time of construction, the focus of the house was the vast desert terrain outside – in the years since, southern California’s suburban sprawl has caught up to the property. The home consists of glass walls that slide open to a number of terraces or pool, garden and desert views. A covered rooftop living room with a view of the mountains is protected on the sides by adjustable louvres.
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