Desert Palisades is a very difficult place to describe because it's so unique for Palm Springs.
Considered a hillside property, we're at the basin of the San Jacinto Mountain Range.
Modernism is a big part of the culture here in the community,
when we built this home the goal for us was really to bring more of an international style of
modernism to the desert and that didn't change, we didn't question our philosophy, the overall goals,
we stuck to our principles and executed a home that we think will be here for many, many years.
It was important that we created a family refuge,
to leave the city, to come out here, to find a chance to decompress.
We really wanted to pay homage to the mountain, we wanted to make sure that you
experienced the mountain completely and the property has been aligned with San Jacinto.
It was all about the view.
The approach of the home is somewhat of a beacon, we recognise there was
a presence about this house and how it was perched up and where it was located.
The natural procession of this home is to come through and into the pool
area and then to the pavilion, where it connects the view to the water.
I think we felt a major responsibility to make sure that this home not only felt
timeless but fit the desert. The home is made up of concrete masonry unit,
we wanted to see new forms to look as if they were coming right out of the soil,
you'll hear us say in the office the desert always wins, you can't run from the fact that
it can be 120 degrees for three, four weeks straight, so the house is also clad in brass.
Brass has a composition that allows for the least amount of expansion-contraction,
that's critical because in the desert there can be 40 degree swings.
The brass is going to change, it's going to patina,
we're not trying to repaint this every two years we're trying to just let it weather naturally.
Plaster is something that we use quite often on the inside of the home for a lot of reasons,
one it provides depth and warmth, but we also love the texture quality.
It begins to speak to the natural landscape.
Travertine for us was another opportunity to re-emphasize the timeless quality of this home.
We've used a lot of earth tones such as greens and browns,
it was incredibly important for us to continue to have that dialogue
between the rocks that are currently on the property and the actual man-made environment.
All the glass on this home has had all the iron removed, what that does is it removes the green,
and allows for the glass to be more clear.
The tonal nature of the home allows for the views to be that much more powerful.
On the Eastern front of the home, all the glass is fixed,
making sure that it was all about the views and there was no operability to keep
the window profiles thin as possible and not introduce new horizontal breaks in the glass.
All the details are very finely curated, however there's this conversation between these
really finely curated details and this rugged outdoor area that is almost like otherworldly.
Across the Western
portion of the home you'll notice that it's all sliders,
it just allows the home to feel as if in a way you're camping,
if you're in the primary suite you open up the sliders, you have a nice big rock
out front you're not stepping off into something that's man-made, you're stepping off into nature.
For us we want the architecture to almost disappear and go away,
to take a back seat to its surroundings.
The home isn't too intimidating to be able to use, you can sit in here and you feel as if you can put
your feet up, you feel as if you can enjoy the moment. There's a peacefulness about this piece
of architecture that is experienced throughout the day but the most peaceful moment happens to be, in
my opinion at night when you just are sitting in this beautiful pavilion, floating above the rocks.
That conversation or that juxtaposition between the finely curated modern piece of architecture
and the native landscape is what makes this so powerful.