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Richard Neutra's Kaufmann House, built in 1946, was immortalized in Slim Aarons's Poolside Gossip photo as the epitome of midcentury glamour in 1970. Last October, it was listed for $25 million, but now the price has been lowered to a relative bargain at $16.95 million. A decade earlier he employed well-known architect Frank Lloyd Wright to build his Pittsburgh home known as Fallingwater. Additionally, the Harrises were able to have a long-closed section of a Utah quarry re-opened to mine matching stone to replace what had been removed or damaged.
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Major outdoor rooms are enclosed by a row of movable vertical fins that offer flexible protection against sandstorms and intense heat. 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. Visitors first follow a short, irregular pathway that traverses a small, landscaped area with boulders and desert plants. On its left side, the walkway is delineated by a wall faced with dry-set Utah sandstone; a cantilevered roof offers shade.
Richard Neutra's Kaufmann House epitomises desert modernism in Palm Springs
Palm Springs Poolside Gossip Kaufmann House by Richard Neutra is for sale. - Town & Country
Palm Springs Poolside Gossip Kaufmann House by Richard Neutra is for sale..
Posted: Thu, 24 Jun 2021 07:00:00 GMT [source]
The garden permeates almost inadvertently throughout the house with smooth oscillations. Even designed with right angles, the forms of the house are very smooth; yet the severe winds of northeast Palm Springs still blow everything they can get a hold of, despite improvements to the walls and blinds. 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. From an aesthetic point of view, they defined a clear plan, from a purely functional, serving as a shield against the wind.
Timeline
The rest of the house branches out like a pinwheel in each of the cardinal directions. From the center of the house each wing that branches out has its own specific function; however, the most important aspects of the house are oriented east/west while the supporting features are oriented north/south. Even in a city full of architectural curiosities and bold statements, the estate dubbed El Kantara has been a standout since 1927. Its footprint in Old Las Palmas has grown to approximately 14,000 square feet since heralded Academy Award–nominated art director and architect Leland F. Fuller created the home originally inspired by the Samarkand Persian Hotel in Santa Barbara.
Fire features jut out into reflecting pools at the rear of the house, incorporating two elements in one grand gesture. Expanses of travertine wrap interior spaces that seamlessly connect to the outdoors thanks to fully pocketing door and window systems. Other features include an atrium stairwell, screening room, and glass-enclosed wine cellar next to the dining area.
Spaces
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. They hit upon a seemingly perfect solution -- they offered the house at auction as a piece of art. A precedent had already been set with the 2003 Sotheby's auction of Mies van der Rohe's innovative Farnsworth house which sold for $7.5 million. The Harrises went with Christies who put a pre-auction estimate for the house at $15-25 Million. The Kaufmann desert house received a final bid of $15 million, but the sale was not completed due to a breach of terms by the buyer. On my first visit, I was disappointed to discover that only a small part of the house is visible from the road.
The home was made to be lived in just 60 days a year (January and February, when the Kaufmanns escaped the Northeast). But after the Kaufmann family sold the estate in 1955, three successive owners — including former Chargers owner Gene Klein and singer Barry Manilow — made changes to make the home more livable year-round. Walls were pushed out, patios were enclosed, surfaces were repainted, air-conditioning was added to the roof, and the original square footage nearly doubled. The updates didn’t stop until 1993, when new owners Brent and Beth Harris, a financial executive and architectural historian, bought the home. The south wing connects to the public realm and includes a carport and two long covered walkways. These walkways are separated by a massive stone wall and led to public and service entries, respectively.
The Iconic Slim Aarons Poolside Gossip Home in Palm Springs Sells for Record Sum
The Kaufmann House distills space in the silver-plated horizontal planes that rest atop transparent glass panes. The unique sharp vertical feature is the chimney located next to the “public square”, as Neutra called it. This vacation home was designed to emphasize the desert landscape and its harsh climate. Today, the 3,162-square-foot modernist home looks almost exactly as it did a half-century ago, thanks to five years of painstaking renovations.
The 3,200-square-foot home features five bedrooms, all of which are located on the first floor, with only a covered patio available on the second floor. Much of that main level flaunts wood-panel ceilings and floor-to-ceiling windows, creating a distinctly modernist atmosphere. The floor plan is arranged to maximize outdoor access, with guest, service, and primary wings extending from the living and dining rooms, where the stone fireplace is located. Kaufmann passed away in 1955 and the Kaufmann House was left abandoned for several years.
Two residential communities dominated the Greater Palm Springs real estate market in 2023, claiming the 10 highest sale prices of the year. The Madison Club in La Quinta and Bighorn Golf Club in Palm Desert saw transactions ranging from $8,775,000 to $31,750,000, with The Madison Club taking the top spot. All are pool homes (no surprise), and all have sweeping golf course views; the smallest among them is 6,968 square feet. The exclusive clubs, with amenities second to none, prove worthy of their steep membership and homeowners association dues.
To the right, the view goes across a lawn with interspersed boulders toward an outdoor swimming pool. Behind the sandstone-faced wall Neutra placed a car garage and a secondary entrance into the western wing of the house, which contained the service spaces and servant quarters furthest west. Kaufmann, a notorious womanizer, completed the desert house as his marriage disintegrated.
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. The property was also enlarged to suit Neutra's vision for a desert retreat, and replacement stonework was mined from a quarry in Utah to match the original construction.
The north and south wings are the most public parts of the house that connect to the central living area. The south wing consists of a covered walkway that leads from the center of the house to the carport. After the Harrises divorced, the house was placed in a 2008 Christie’s auction of important contemporary art. Though the house gaveled to a qualified buyer at $19.1 million, the sale fell out of escrow not longer after — the rumor being that the buyer’s money was from a family trust, and family lawyers put a stop to the sale. Having acquired her real estate license and a desk at Edie Adams Realty, Nelda brokered a deal with San Diego Chargers owner Eugene Klein. Harris says that one of the reasons that Kaufmann and Neutra clicked was that they were both Austrians interested in the theories and writings of fellow countrymen Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung.
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. A handful of his projects are located in Palm Springs, which – thanks to its location two hours east of Hollywood – became a hotbed of modernist architecture during the mid-20th century. Movie stars and celebrities in the 1950s and 1960s hired architects to build contemporary weekend residences that were in vogue at the time. The house has a cross-shaped plan, with a square living and dining room at the centre, and wings that extend out in cardinal directions. To the west is a kitchen and service rooms, accessed by a covered breezeway, with a master bedroom to the east. Built in 1946, the boxy two-storey residence has many defining elements of modern architecture – a flat roof, pale exterior and shaded outdoor spaces – tailored to the arid climate of the California desert.
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