It's called The Desert House and is described as the most important architectural house you may have never seen. It is so the description goes, physically part of the desert, at one with its surroundings. The strength of the land and rugged protective shell exterior is drawn from the desert. The textures provide the touch and feel of the desert as the building materials were selected from the same place.
The property, on the market for only three million dollars as the owners have decided to downsize, highlights the masculine and feminine forms that are the hallmark of organic architecture.
Here's a link to some more images including some of the interior which was designed by John Vigrin and that sadly I considered to be so ugly
I couldn't bring myself to post them...
This building in the surrounding desert looks like the bones of a dead animal that have dried white in the hot sun.
ReplyDeleteHaha, what a wonderful description Suzy...
Delete3 mil is cheap.
ReplyDeleteI think the interiors are much of a piece with the exterior design. It's beautiful, if you happen to like that kind of modern Ero Saarinen aesthetic. I think I could learn to live with it.
Some practical points. How about water catchment? A wind-powered generator? Food grown on the spot? Earthships have all that, and they're designed to sustain you in the desert. I'm afraid this swanky pad is hopelessly dependent on external fossil fuel-powered support systems. If the grid goes down, it's a Roman ruin.
3M is cheap but I'd sooner have a Michael Reynolds Earthship any day...
DeleteEarthship? Me too! And furthermore the cost is a fraction of this.
ReplyDeleteI should have mentioned solar power also. For the desert that's a no-brainer.
Suzy, for the next version maybe the living room will be shaped like a skull. You look out on the vista through the eye holes.. .
Wow!!
ReplyDeleteWow! Life is strange! I am pretty sure that is the same house that was being built as i was making a water delivery to the man who financed that house for his daughter there in Joshua Tree. I remember it so well because the father lived in a run down old desert shack and his daughter was to live in the house you have featured here. And i was just thinking about it before i visited your website today. At the time i was not interested in seeing it, i was just tickled that the girls father lived in an old shack and had all the money to finance her new
ReplyDeleteultra modern home. I used to drive a water hauling truck delivering potable water to people living in the desert and i would fill their domestic water tanks. Or maybe i was picking up scrap metal, but i remember talking to her father and he was telling me about the situation with the home.
Keith, thanks for attempting to save us from the interior. I wasn't wise enough to take your word for it and unfortunately went to the link and viewed the images myself....
ReplyDeleteI grew up visiting my part-time desert-rat grandparents in the high desert nearby, and can fully appreciate the beauty of that area, as well as the adverse climate at times during the yearly cycle. This ~could~ have been an exercise in cooperation with the natural elements in that beautiful setting, but....
Proving once again that money and good taste are mostly non-compatible attributes.
One word, armadillo. One thought: Sad, but not surprising, fate.
ReplyDeleteInteresting is a word that comes to mind. But I'm with Suzy on this. Very much a bleached carcass. Even more so on the interior. Too creepy for a living space in my book but each to their own I guess.
ReplyDeleteThis house belongs to the artist, Bev Doolittle. The house is located off the south end of Mt Shasta Avenue in Joshua Tree, overlooking the national park.
ReplyDeleteThanks William...
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