PALM SPRINGS BUILDING BOOM
The desert is erupting -- poised as a hotbed for
new tracts backed by mid-century modern principles

From the pages of CA-Modern magazine
By Dave Weinstein

Dennis Cunningham got his first inkling by the mid-1990s. "People were starting to buy Alexanders and fixing them up," he says about the 1950s modern tract houses that filled much of Palm Springs. "There was something going on."

It came to Mark Bodon, who grew up in a Palm Springs Alexander, when he strolled into an example that remained perfectly preserved. "I was like walking into an 'I Love Lucy' episode," he says, "and I realized, Palm Springs has something special. It struck me as being a cool house because it was connected to our past."

Both men quickly made themselves part of what was going on -- the return to Palm Springs of mid-century modern homes, or at least new homes rooted in mid-century principles. Success didn't come overnight, but it came quickly, as fans of modern design from Los Angeles, San Diego, and elsewhere decided that what Cunningham calls 'new modern' worked as well, or better, than refurbished retro.

Cunningham, who had been in the building business since age 15, started with modern slowly in 1997, a dozen homes here, then two there, another seven to the south, then five to the north. Working with the Santa Barbara and Los Angeles architectural firm DesignARC, which was founded by a friend, Cunningham began producing tightly packed clusters of single-family, townhouse, and condos, boxy and abstract, with tall living areas, steel trellises, deeply inset windows, and walls of glass facing courtyard pools.

They sold, buyers spread the word, and Cunningham's firm, Palm Springs Modern Homes, expanded to larger projects.

Bodon discovered that his firm, Modern Living Spaces LLC, was on the right track when he offered his quirky, butterfly- and flat-roofed houses near the windy suburb of Desert Hot Springs to the public during the annual gathering of the faithful, 'Palm Springs Modernism Week' in 2005. "We had people lined up to buy houses, signing checks, saying 'I want one,' " Bodon says. "Our salesperson was late and people got upset. It was intense." Bodon moved 16 houses that weekend. "Modern's hot. It's really hot," he says. "Modern furnishings, modern houses."

Throughout the Coachella Valley, perhaps a dozen developers, from the very small to very large, have modern projects on sale or in the works. Some aim to recreate, or at least emulate, the houses built by the Alexander Construction Company. Run by the father-son team of George and Robert Alexander, the firm built more than 2,000 modern houses in Palm Springs between 1955 and 1965 when the Alexanders and their wives died in a plane crash.

"We are getting wonderful contemporary designs based on mid-century principles," says Robert Imber, an architectural historian and tour guide. Other observers wonder just how 'modern' these recent specimens really are. Does it make sense to recreate the forms of an Alexander house, which was built in the 1950s, and call it modern in 2006?

"What you see going up now, modern quote-unquote, is tack-on architecture, exterior decoration," says one of the architects whose designs from mid-century are most copied, Donald Wexler.

"The biggest problem we're having now is people mimicking that style," says Philip K. Smith III, one of the desert's younger architects. "[Mid-century modernism] evolved because it was technological, on the cutting edge at that time. It's 60 years later. Why are we mimicking that style? We should use their methods and their ways of thinking to create architecture for the 21st Century."

That, Smith says, is exactly what he, as well as his friends and fellow architects, are trying to do throughout the area -- people like Lance O'Donnell, Ana Maria Escalante, and Peter Blackburn. Over the next few years, residential communities designed by these younger architects, most of which are still on paper, could put a new face on Palm Springs modern.

Smith believes a new modernism is taking root in the desert that will be as appealing as anything built during the golden age of the '50s and '60s, without copying its outward forms. "I think there are amazing things happening here now," he says.

"It's not this kind of look or this kind of material. It's an attitude about life, and living in the desert, and shadow, and texture," Smith says. "That's what I'm taking from mid-century modern, an attitude about living."

Smith grew up in Palm Springs, but his friend, architect Sean Lockyer, moved here from the East and is surprised more young architects aren't doing the same. "This is a perfect climate for an architect," Lockyer says. "There are great budgets and a savvy audience out here and they really appreciate modern stuff."

Rather than copying the mid-century look, Smith says, savvy architects are riding the wave of its newfound popularity. The architects behind DesignARC, he says, "are capitalizing on the fact that mid-century [modern] is popular. That allows them to build in a more modern way."

About their designs for Palm Springs Modern Homes, DesignARC architect Andy Alper says, "It's a continuation of Palm Springs modernism, or desert modernism. But there's no direct correlation with the one-story, single-family houses the Alexanders did. We're not trying to duplicate that."

When the firm O'Donnell + Escalante was invited to design a new generation of 'Alexander homes' for the builder Contempo Homes, the architects had to convince their client that copying Alexanders wouldn't do. "You need to adapt it to today's lifestyles," O'Donnell told the client.

"He was looking at the Alexanders with nostalgia," Escalante says of their client. "Like some people have old cars and drive them around on Sunday. Instead, we looked at them as a point of departure. We wanted to create nice modern houses built economically. It wasn't, 'I want a 'Leave it to Beaver' kind of thing."

The houses they're designing for Alexander Country Club and Alexander Vista Estates may borrow butterfly and long gable rooflines from Dan Palmer and William Krisel's original designs for the Alexanders, and folded plate roofs from Donald Wexler. But they have larger kitchens designed for entertaining and larger bedrooms.

"People want the '50s," Mark Bodon of Modern Living Spaces says, "but they really don't want the '50s. They like the comfort of today."

No developer or architect, of course, admits to mimicking the '50s -- though some clearly are. And all claim to be following modernist principles -- though some do not. Desert architects and builders often criticize each other's work, often passionately but rarely for attribution. Most of the players know each other and many, after all, are friends.

Modern Living Spaces gets dinged for aping the forms of mid-century but without the light or openness to the out of doors that made the Alexanders special. Palm Springs Modern Homes and Contempo build too densely for the vastness of the desert, some complain. And by using what Alper calls "plant-ons" to provide shade, instead of providing shade with extensions of structural element, Palm Springs Modern's projects don't meet the modernist requirement for structural honesty.

Developers, of course, worry less about the tenets of the modern movement than about appealing to their market and building houses that withstand the rigors of blazing hot days, chilly nights, desert winds, and sandstorms.

Their market, they say, is an educated one, largely gay, and attuned to design. Few buyers bring children. A majority of Palm Springs residences remain vacation, or at least part-time, homes. "Every single person who buys one of my houses is into architecture," Cunningham says, and many use their homes as canvases for their own creativity. "A lot of the guys that buy from me, they have style with a capital 'S.'" Cunningham's goal is to build homes that are "affordable," he says, which means today in the $500,000 to $700,000 range.

"Our market is a pretty interesting crowd," says Bodon, whose B-Bar-H Ranch subdivision, near Desert Hot Springs, sells under $400,000 to "people who want a modern house in Palm Springs but can't afford it." Bodon's buyers include hospital technicians, a bartender, house painter, a coffee shop manager, a cabinetmaker -- "sort of working class people," he says

When the Alexanders were new, energy was cheap and there were no Title 24 regulations requiring energy efficiency. Glass was plentiful and roofs thin. Today, when cooling a glass-walled Alexander can cost $700 a month, builders try to provide homes that are open to the out of doors but protected from its ravages. "It's all about the roof and the way you have to be in the shade," says Alper, the architect with DesignARC. "You want to be outside but you don't want to be in the sun."

Many developers, including Bodon, reduce energy use by cutting back on the expanses of glass that characterized Alexander houses. But Alper says glass walls can still work if balanced by more efficient cooling. Tankless, on-demand water heaters are one amenity their houses are providing to reduce energy use.

Contempo goes even further in its efforts to reduce energy use by providing photovoltaic solar panels on each of its homes, plus structural insulated paneling, smart irrigation, and recycled materials. "Every home we build will be a green home," marketing director Bob Mahlowitz says.

SIPS (structural insulated panels), sandwiches of plywood and rigid foam insulation, serve as wall and ceilings and, along with better-insulated glass, allow for as much window area as the original Alexanders, Escalante says.

Everyone agrees that building in the desert is about living in the desert. But what does that mean when the desert is rapidly changing? Palm Springs, once a village where Cary Grant and Dinah Shore could window shop without fear of paparazzi, has become a city, and land prices have skyrocketed. "Palm Springs is turning from a haven into a city, which is the place people fled from to come here," architect Lance O'Donnell says.

Cunningham spent the '90s buying up parcels of infill land that no one else wanted -- in the days when Palm Springs was dead. As a result, he says, "I've got enough land for 500 doors," meaning townhouses, condos, and some detached houses. Contempo Homes and a few others are also building in town, and at densities that appall such old-timers as Donald Wexler, who oversees much of the city's development as a member of its Architectural Advisory Committee.

At high densities, O'Donnell notes, "Privacy becomes an issue." Escalante adds: "You have to use every square foot in an efficient fashion." That means two-story living, walls that extend to the lot line, and compact swimming pool steps from the living area.

One architect who successfully designed compact neo-modern homes isn't a newcomer at all. Wexler's four-house infill neighborhood from 2003, Tropicana, with its supremely open plan (a sunken tub in the master bedroom-living area), has won praise from critics and buyers alike.

Developers and architects who prefer wide-open spaces, or simply can't afford Palm Springs, are heading for the hinterlands. Desert Hot Springs is expected to boom over the next few years. Besides Bodon's Modern Living Spaces, the Los Angeles architecture firm Marmol Radziner + Associates has installed a much-admired prefabricated house in the area, serving as a prototype for more to come.

Near southern Palm Desert, Sean Lockyer plans a four-home subdivision with walls of Corten steel and local rocks held in place by wire mesh, not mortar. The homes will likely sell for more than $1 million, and serve as models for lower cost homes elsewhere, he says. Like his friend Smith, Lockyer hopes to become both a developer and architect. That way, he says, "If I have a concept and a dream, I can see it though myself."

Smith, the son of a prominent local real estate developer, is buying land for a small subdivision in the high desert town of Joshua Tree, 25 miles northeast of Palm Springs.

Smith, 33, has made a name for himself as the chairman of the Architect and Design Council at the Palm Springs Museum. He's lead tours of modern architecture in Phoenix, which he loves for its imagination and innovative use of materials, including Corten steel ("the color of it matches almost precisely the rocks of these mountain," he says), frosted glass, and rammed earth.

"We just don't see that dynamic out here," Smith says. "We hope to inspire and affect design today so that 50 years from now, there will still be buildings around people are interested in conserving."

His immediate goal for Joshua Tree is a trio of 800- to 1,000-square-foot houses that would sell for $275-350,000 and be "about living in the desert." "The early Wexler houses, when they were built, there was nothing else around them," Smith says. "The high desert affords that kind of purity now. It's there."

Photos: Barry Sturgill (architect/builder profiles) and Matthew Bamberg (Modern Living Spaces/Mark Bodon); and other renderings and images courtesy O'Donnell + Escalante, Modern Living Spaces, and Contempo Homes.

The Players

New modern houses are popping up quickly in Palm Springs -- and more are on the drawing boards than under construction. Here are some of the people and firms behind the new modernism:

• Architectural Properties, a realty firm run by Allen Miller, co-developed the four-home Tropicana designed by Don Wexler. Houses are done and occupied. 760-320-8488.

• The Art Office, in Indio, is where Phillip K. Smith II and assistants design church buildings, sculpture, furniture, and residential projects that are still on the drawing board, including a cluster of three houses in Indio. He hopes to develop three small houses in Joshua Tree that he expects would sell for $275-350,000. 760-342-4111

• Contempo Homes. Working primarily with the architectural firm O'Donnell + Escalante, Contempo is developing several neighborhoods of single- and multi-family housing in Palm Springs, including 25 units at Alexander Country Club Estates, 39 at Alexander Vista Estates, and 78 at Alexander Village. Alexander Vista will sell in the mid $700,000's. On the market starting at $1.8 million is the six-home Royal Palm Estates designed by architect Charles Garland. 760-325-3916

• DesignARC, based in Santa Barbara, Los Angeles and Orange County, has designed several single- and multi-family projects for Palm Springs Modern Homes. Some are complete, others still on the boards. 310-204-8950.

• Doug Hudson is an architect who has won a reputation for modern custom homes -- including one for himself -- and other projects, but not tract homes. "My buildings are quite contemporary," he says. "I don't try to be kitschy or nostalgic about mid-century modernism."

• William Krisel, who designed the original Alexander homes with his firm Palmer and Krisel, is working with developer Maxx Livingstone Mid-Century Modern Homes to create new individual Alexanders, with original floor plans but updated insulation, kitchens, and bathrooms. None have been built yet.

• Lennar is a major national developer that hopes to build "four modern-styled neighborhoods" at a gated golf course community named Escena Palm Springs.

• Sean Lockyer AR+D, a Palms Springs architect, plans to design and develop a four-house subdivision near Palm Desert. Houses would sell for over $1 million, Lockyer projects, and would serve as models for lower-cost houses that could be built on smaller lots elsewhere. 760-567-4668.

• Marmol Radziner + Associates is a Los Angeles architectural firm that has built one striking prefabricated home on a hilltop near Desert Hot Springs and plans to sell others, ranging from 1,000 to 1,570 square feet. 310-826-6222.

• Modern Living Spaces LLC is developing homes for $370-400,000 at the B-Bar-H Guest Ranch at the edge of Desert Hot Springs. Some are occupied, others are being built, and more are planned. Models include 'The Gibson,' 'The Manhattan,' and 'The Brandy Alexander,' all named after cocktails and designed by local architects, including Lance O'Donnell. 760-799-7676.

• Nexus Residential Communities is developing Biltmore Colony, single-family houses (designed by DesignARC), and condominiums. The project is nearing completion.

• O'Donnell + Escalante. Ana Maria Escalante and Lance O'Donnell run a small firm that is designing houses for Contempo Homes; custom homes; and The Towers, a condo development; plus commercial, church, and civic projects. The Towers is nearing completion. The firm's single-family subdivisions have not yet been built. 760-323-1925.

• The Office of Mobile Design, a Los Angeles firm headed by Jennifer Siegel, is marketing prefabricated homes near Desert Hot Springs. 310-439-1129.

• Palm Springs Modern Homes, working with architects DesignARC, has completed approximately 250 units in several single- and multiple-family projects throughout Palm Springs, including 24@Arenas, 7@Twin Palms, 12@Dunes Court, 5@Miraleste, and 48@Baristo. Soon to come: 43@Raquet Club and 156@Tahquitz. Homes generally sell in the $500-700,000 range. 760-320-8773.

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