I'm Michael Kovac of Kovac Design Studio, and I'm Thomas Schneider and we're here at
the Madison Desert Club in La Quinta California. Palm Springs is a vacation area near Los Angeles,
surrounded by amazing mountains that tower over it. We're just kind of across the street from
where the Coachella Music Festival is held. Our client really enjoys having lots of friends over,
to make that happen we created this idea of a boutique hotel,
a central gathering space flanked by twin primary suites and twin guest casitas but
they're linked underneath a continuous canopy. It provides exactly the kind of dappled organic
light that changes throughout the day, even minute by minute, that we were looking for.
It was very important to us that you actually have this feeling of walking outside to go through your
own bedroom or casita rooms where everybody can retreat to and really feel quite at ease.
The terraces that are shared can also be divided with wood fences that are built into the wall and
slide out, and when you want to party and come back together you come back to the main house
to the pool, to the cover terrace, barbecue area.
The main building is organised in three levels, the lower level being the spa and gym,
the main room is a two-level space that comprises the kitchen, the living room
and the bar. The bar is defined by the metal mesh, someone referred to the colours in the bar as a
whiskey, like you really feel like you're inside a very sophisticated cocktail and the upper level is
a smaller space that is dedicated to a screening room, and it's really all about surprise right,
so you could walk through this house 10 times during the day and never understand
that that's anything other than a little quiet room upstairs and then actually see it open,
everyone basically admits a gasp, that's like oh my gosh that's the coolest thing,
it really does keep coming back for us, to play into this idea of boutique hotel.
A house that works great for two people and they don't feel like they're rattling around,
or 200 people and even if there's 200 people there still are moments that you can find,
I think that's one of the magic elements of the property.
All of the spaces have floor-to-ceiling glass that opens up,
these areas are intended to be open all day long. We've heightened that sense of
no boundary by the way we've treated the project materials. We wanted to relate to the mountains
in the distance with the colour of the floors, we employed washed, rough plaster that's used
inside and outside. You allude to something in the distance by placing it closer to you,
you don't comprehend where your property ends and where the actual landscape begins,
the materials of things that you actually touch were intended to be softer and more
sophisticated and relate back to the Palm Springs era, The Rat Pack era of glamorous entertainment,
there are marbles and exquisitely finished woods and seating areas that are very intentionally
plush and luxurious, and we came up with this idea to give each of the guest rooms its own identity.
Having a colour, there's a pink room, a blue room, a grey room, a yellow room,
each colour identifies that room subtly.
They are kind of at these seemingly arbitrary angles, framing views, it creates a sense of
surprise as you're walking through this space, you don't quite know what's around the next corner.
One of the signature features of the project is what we call the Oculus.
You're seeing an elliptical opening in the canopy and it's designed to frame the sky.
It creates a threshold basically from the world outside, to the space of entertainment, vacation.
The desert sky is so dramatic, it's a little moment of art and if you didn't
have that framing device I think you'd just walk past it and not notice it.
The canopy slides into the house and cuts off a superfluous amount of the sky
you're left with this wide screen very powerful framing of the desert.
One of the treats of working on this project was the fact that we had the chance to be both the
architects and the interior designers and really design a concept from the sighting of the house
all the way down to almost the napkins, creating this luxury retreat feeling that
merges Palm Springs, LA and light California living in a sophisticated and elevated way.
For me the thing I'm most proud about in this project, is just the way it makes people feel.
Invariably people that come here just want to stay,
that's really what we're driving for with all of our projects, it has really become a club,
it's a place for people to come and enjoy multiple aspects of it, whether it's a swim,
spa, work out in the gym, gather with friends or have a large party or an intimate get-together,
it's about enjoyment and it's about being away from your everyday.