How Extreme Climate Helped Shape Palm Springs Modernism
A new book deep dives into the Palm Springs School of Architecture, unpacking how the California desert became integral to the work of the midcentury movement’s masters.
Extreme climate has helped shape modern architecture from its beginnings. Frank Lloyd Wright, well aware of Chicago’s cold winters and steaming summers, incorporated long, wide, horizontal eaves that startled passersby. In summer months, these eaves shut direct sunlight out of the interior of the Frederick C. Robie House but welcomed the low winter sun into the house as it warmed the concrete floor and brick pillars and walls.
The simplicity of uninterrupted geometries where the material’s color and texture provided decorative richness came to define early modern architecture. They impressed young European architects—especially Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Walter Gropius—in their search for the age’s architectural expression. The desert climate provoked similar inventive forms in midcentury Palm Springs. Sunscreens, trellises, visors, covered walkways—a vast catalog of architectural devices passively responding to the desert environment became a key creative motif.
Santa Fe Federal Savings and Loan (now Palm Springs Art Museum, Architecture and Design Center) by E. Stewart Williams, 1960.
Photo by Dan Chavkin
E. Stewart Williams placed movable sunscreens on the glassy east and west sides of Santa Fe Federal Savings and Loan; the screens added a metal filigree stretching between two protruding slabs of roof and floor floating above the ground. Albert Frey’s turret-shaped second-story addition to Frey I in 1953 features circular windows with cylindrical fixed visors, each sliced at specific angles to keep the sun from entering the interior. Before starting a design, Frey would regularly plot out the changing sun angles through the year for the site, and he planned the windows, overhangs, and views accordingly. Such technical knowledge shaped Frey’s modern buildings.
Steel Development Homes (now Alexander Steel Homes) by Donald Wexler and Richard Harrison, 1962.
Photo by Dan Chavkin
Enormous sun visors integral to the turtle-shell roof of the Bob and Dolores Hope House by John Lautner each frame a different view from its ridgetop perch while controlling sunlight: one frames Mount San Gorgonio in the far distance, one the south valley, and one the rugged hillside.
And so on. Responding to the same challenge of passively controlling direct sunlight and heat load, each architect integrated his own inventive solution into the aesthetic of his buildings. Until the adoption of mechanical air conditioning in the 1950s, much of Anglo Palm Springs—like the Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians migrating to higher, cooler ground—escaped in summertime to homes and offices in Los Angeles, Pasadena, or Orange County. Some buildings updated a historical technique used by Middle Eastern desert dwellers by integrating ponds of water into buildings to cool the air through evaporation. Ever a student of history, Richard Neutra included a pool of water for that purpose in his desert house for Grace Miller.
Grace Lewis Miller House by Richard Neutra, 1937.
Photo by Julius Shulman. © J. Paul Getty Trust. Getty Research Institute,brLos Angeles.
Wexler was one of the first to design his own home with mechanical air-conditioning as a benefit to his pregnant wife. Even before this energy crisis, Palm Springs School architects were shaping their open, glassy designs to minimize the impact of the extreme climate. Like Wright’s Robie House, wide eaves placed in optimal locations kept sunlight from streaming into a structure. Sliding glass walls optimized natural ventilation from the predictable winds blowing through the northern Banning Pass or cascading down the steep canyons of Mount San Jacinto.
Arthur Elrod House by John Lautner, 1968.
Photo by Leland Lee, courtesy Palm Springs Art Museum
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The Palm Springs School: Desert Modernism 1934-1975
Palm Springs is at the center of a unique tradition in architecture marked by invention and a sensitivity to local conditions that has resulted in design that exerts an influence far greater than the town’s small size. The book is the first to fully explore the wide ranging forms this architecture has taken, from houses to gas stations, hotels to airports, banks to restaurants and spas. Much more than a resort destination, Palm Springs has served as a laboratory of the modern; here so much architectural innovation and design took form. From the steel-and-glass boxes of Richard Neutra to the earthy organic homes of John Lautner, and everything in between, the solutions of architects and designers—including notably William F. Cody, E. Stewart Williams, and Albert Frey—were diverse and are ever more relevant in the face of contemporary challenges. Their answers addressed questions that still hold urgency: How to design sustainably in harsh climates? How to use technology efficiently and creatively to meet those challenges? How to build affordable and high-quality mass-produced housing? How to reflect a region’s culture, economy, and distinctive atmosphere? Architects here responded to nature’s climatological demands, and Palm Springs became a center for innovations that were rooted in practice more than theory. Benefitting from the architectural freedoms offered by the remoteness of the California desert, designers explored new approaches that we can now identify as central to the Palm Springs School, shown here in rich archival and contemporary photography. Author: Alan Hess Contributions by Christine Madrid French, Eddie Jones, Ken Lyon, George E. Thomas, and Sian Winship. About The Author Alan Hess is an architect, historian, and author. Eddie Jones is an award-winning architect. Ken Lyon, a licensed architect, is a city planner based in Palm Springs. Christine Madrid French is a historian and preservationist. George E. Thomas is a cultural and architectural historian. Sian Winship is president of the Society of Architectural Historians, Southern California Chapter. Publish Date: February 11, 2025 Publisher: Rizzoli
ShopExcerpted from The Palm Springs School: Desert Modernism 1934-1975 by Alan Hess, with contributions by Christine Madrid French, Eddie Jones, Ken Lyon, George E. Thomas, and Sian Winship, published by Rizzoli in collaboration with the Palm Springs Architectural Alliance. Text and photographs copyright © 2025. All rights reserved.
Top photo by Julius Shulman of Albert Frey House II a.k.a. Frey II, 1964. © J. Paul Getty Trust. Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles.
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Photo Essay: Revisit the Midcentury Classics of Palm Springs and Beyond
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