RESURRECTING THE DESERT
Staying true to mid-century ethos, remodelers
return to 'home bones' for a fresh, new look

From the pages of CA-Modern magazine
By Dave Weinstein

Architect Lance O'Donnell approaches his residential remodeling jobs in the Palm Springs area like a detective -- or a forensic scientist. What has happened to all too many of the valley's mid-century modern homes, after all, is a crime. They've been turned into hacienda, fake 'adobes,' or Colonials with shutters.

"We try to find out where the original bones are," says O'Donnell, whose five-person firm is called o2 Architecture. "It's almost like taking an x-ray of the building. We find out where the bones are, then we strip it back."

Another remodeler, John Lewis grimaces as he shows off one of his recent projects, a 40-year-old home with an elegant butterfly roof that had been stuccoed over and made "heavily Spanish." "We take stuff like that," he says, "and get rid of it."

Over the past decade Palm Springs has been returning to life. Modern houses, from masterpieces by internationally known architects to anonymous tract homes, are being restored. The architects and builders behind the trend are doing more than restoring individual buildings. They are giving new life to the town, which has seized on its once-forgotten image as an icon of modernity. And by modernizing the homes, remodelers have created a new style that remains true to the mid-'50s ethos while bringing to it the colors and textures of today. They are also spurring on the development of brand new housing that harks back to the spirit of the 1950s and '60s, when the father-son team of George and Robert Alexander and other developers filled block after block with modern tract homes.

Several architects and firms that have remodeled Palm Springs houses, including Lance O'Donnell and his former partner Ana Escalante, each of whom have gone on to design new houses based on the mid-century aesthetic. The market for revamped mid-century houses has spurred builders on to create new houses in a similar style.

Remodelers also seek to satisfy the modern homebuyer's desires for more space, larger bathrooms and kitchens, added storage, better cooling and insulation, and a taste of luxury, while adhering to the minimalist aesthetic that characterizes modernism. The better remodelers are also re-emphasizing such mid-century architectural values as openness to the out-of-doors, open plans, and a return to a simpler way of life. "Minimal," is a phrase John Lewis, whose firm is Steichen Lewis Designs, often uses when describing his remodels. In general, Palm Springs remodeling is not about restoring a home to its pristine, original condition. "Buyers are looking for that mid-century look, but they aren't purists," Lewis says. "They're also looking for that hipness." "A restored Alexander has more value than one with a mansard roof," says Escalante.

But there's a limit to how authentic buyers want a home to be. "The buyers like the architecture but they're not diehard preservationists who want it in the original condition," says real estate broker Paul Kaplan, who specializes in modern homes with Pacific Union GMAC Real Estate. "If I have a house that's more 'period,' it's tougher to sell. It's nice, but people want a dish washer, they want a nice walk-in shower."

A successfully remodeled mid-century Palm Springs house will retain the sleek, low-slung lines of the original, as well as its distinctive detail -- a screen of concrete blocks, textured block walls, broad overhangs -- but may add a palette of reserved pastels, a doorway of frosted glass, additional walls of glass sliders, cabinetry of natural wood, and of course high-end kitchens. Steichen Lewis Designs pioneered another contemporary touch, a concrete walkway of Mondrian-like rectangles.

In general, a remodeled modern tract home is likely to be more colorful and have a wider range of materials than when it was first built -- just a touch of 21st century style.

"We take the principles" of mid-century modernism," Escalante says, "but we don't believe in recreating something that is gone. We live in a different era. But we adhere to the same principles, honesty of materials, indoor-outdoor, pushing the technology."

O'Donnell, whose firm designs new mixed-use projects and housing, says the goal in remodeling a mid-century house is to return it to its structural roots while adjusting the house for contemporary lifestyles and with contemporary technology. O'Donnell has worked on more than a dozen Alexander homes, as well as several homes by architect William Cody.

Working on classic mid-century homes has influenced his own designs, O'Donnell says. But that doesn't mean copying details of windows or doors, or trying to reproduce the mid-century look. "It's not a bag of tricks," he says. "It's looking at the projects holistically."

Working closely on mid-century buildings, he says, has "driven home the sense that there is an underlying structure to the building, there is a harmony in the parts."

"Those guys were well-grounded in Modernism and rational thinking," O'Donnell says of such mid-century architects as Palmer & Krisel, Don Wexler, and Cody. "They were not paralyzed by style."

Fans attribute some of Palm Springs' newfound embrace of modern architecture to one particularly noticeable remodel job, what Marmol Radziner + Associates refer to as their "five-year archeological dig through the strata of Richard Neutra's Kaufmann House."

The Kaufmann house, built in 1946 for the man who also commissioned Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater, is one of the most famous modern houses in the world. Its restoration in the late '90s helped rekindle the city's pride in its modernist heritage, convinced other architects they could make similar contributions, and helped instigate the city's preservation movement.

Marmol Radziner + Associates, which restored the Kaufmann house, later restored the wonderful Streamline-styled Ship of the Desert. O'Donnell + Escalante helped restore the Tramway Gas Station, an Albert Frey design that was slated for demolition but was saved by Palm Springs' newborn preservation movement. Many iconic, and not-so-iconic, structures have been saved and restored since, including the Orbit Inn (O'Donnell + Escalante) and Neutra's Grace Miller house (architect J. Kent Walker).

Restoring a landmark often requires following regulations (like the Secretary of the Interior's Standards for Historic Restoration). Rules are looser for renovating modern tract homes -- but if you want to do it right, rules do exist. First, Escalante advises, strip away whatever Spanish or Tudor additions have been made And remove any paired concrete lions by the front gate.

Alexander houses, among the most elegant and best known of Palms Springs modern houses, are models of open planning and easy access to the out of doors. But not all of the city's modern houses are as open. Savvy remodelers, like Steichen Lewis, often remove interior walls and turn windows into walls of sliding glass. Pay attention to materials, modernists advise. Standard cabinets and granite countertops don't fit the stripped down, easygoing aesthetic. "It devaluates a mid-century home," Kaplan says, "putting in Saltillo tile floors." Tony Merchell, a historian with the Palm Springs Modern Committee and among the city's more discerning critics, shudders when he sees "P.F Chang stonework," which he named for the chain of Chinese restaurants, "stacked stone that is completely not Palm Springs. Yet people are doing that a lot. "And lately, in the last year or two, there has been a craze for fences, walls and garage doors done out of corrugated aluminum. I guess people see this as a kind of homage to Albert Frey, but that bright finish is something that Albert would never do."

Recently Merchell watched with approval as an Alexander with a folded plate roof was remodeled. Then, he says, "They just went insane with finishing every wall with paint of a different color."

"In Palm Springs," he adds, "there is a tendency to use too many materials. I don't know why, because it's not minimalist.

Steichen Lewis, regarded by some observers as among the best of the "sequential remodelers," have been buying, renovating, and selling modern houses in Palm Springs since 2000, when the dot-com crash convinced Lewis a new profession was in order. Since then Lewis, who supervises the building - and does some of it himself -- and his wife Jane Steichen Lewis, the firm's architect, have redone more than 20 houses.

They often live in the houses while working on them, and their young daughter gives each a name. "Fishy pool house," she dubbed the one with fish tiles in the pool.

Steichen Lewis developed their own look -- with a clean, minimal façade and preserves original shapes and textures. They also incorporate a spare use of dramatic color -- often a rusty orange for the door, an earthy 'hemp' green for trim, and a front door and fencing filled with panels of opaque glass. Natural desert landscaping generally adds to the spare esthetic. "When they come to Palm Springs, a lot of people want to feel like they're in the desert," Lewis says. Steichen Lewis use double-paned glass for insulation, put in pools and fire pits (for cold winter nights), and take out walls and install glass sliders when needed.

Lisa Pfalzgraf bought one of several houses Steichen Lewis renovated in El Rancho Vista Estates, developed by Roy Fey at the early 1960s. The 1,400-square-foot home was opened up by removing an interior wall to create a view towards the pool, and by turning windows into glass sliders. A front courtyard was made private with walls of opaque glass. Vinyl flooring became terrazzo.

"They kept it really simple and really light," Pfalzgraf says. "It's very soothing."

O'Donnell, who grew up in "the clean little desert homes from the '50s" in Palm Springs, is imbued with the modern aesthetic. But when he talks architecture, he talks about making it work. Most houses in Palm Springs were built as second homes and not designed for the heat of the summer, so much of a remodeler's work involves updating air conditioning and insulation.

One challenge, O'Donnell says, is to do all of this without spoiling the house's thin, almost weightless profile. "The Alexanders did it elegantly and efficiently," O'Donnell says. "The Eichlers did that. That's what we're struggling to do."

The Kaufmann house restoration helped to spur the Palm Springs' modern revival. Here's Doing It Right.

Photos: Barry Sturgill, Steichen Lewis Designs

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