The Under-the-Radar Craftsman Behind a Very Iconic Masterpiece

In the beginning, when John Vugrin first began working on the project that would come to define his career, the Kellogg Doolittle House in Joshua Tree, California, the locals struggled to comprehend it. "It was more a curiosity" than a serious endeavor, as Vugrin recalls. Sited amid a mass of boulders abutting Joshua Tree National Park, the house seems teleported from some distant dimension—an armadillo perched on the hillside, perhaps, or an alien hideout.