Last week was Modernism Week in Palm Springs. We stopped to have a look on our way out to Scottsdale.

We started here - the Palm Springs visitor information center. Modern as next week:





And even better when you consider it used to be a gas station:





We wanted to take this bus tour but tickets had been sold out for months:



So we bought a little map (how quaint!) and went exploring on our own.

This recent flip house is for sale at $1.8 mil:



Palm Springs sits on a giant aquifer which allowed residents there to plant their yards the same way they might in LA. Broad lawns were the norm, golf courses, annual beds. Times have changed and a lot of residents are switching over to water-wise landscaping. This house is a particularly nice example:



This one is also nice in a different style:

The main reason I wanted to visit PS was to see this new infill development of "Eichler" homes.

I've posted about these before - we used to live in one. Ours was built in 1962. There were probably 30 tracts of Eichlers built in the 60's and 70's, mostly in the Bay Area. There are three tracts in Orange County, and this is the house we used to live in. It didn't look nearly this nice when we lived there:

Woodside house

A young developer recently discovered these houses and bought original plans from the architects, Anshen and Allen. He somehow managed to re-engineer the plans to meet modern energy and earthquake codes (no small feat for houses built of glass) and built 10 of them.

The plans he used were mostly for houses built in NoCA except one split-roof plan that I have seen in Santa Ana. From the brochures I have seen I'd say the colors are period correct, even if the landscapes are way different.






This is the split roof model that was built in OC:



Love the mailboxes:

Cool!

I WANT that mailbox!

The gas station reminds me of the wonderful gas-station paintings by Ed Ruscha. Pure California.

Love those houses. Particularly like the trend toward desert-appropriate landscaping. My first thought when I moved to LA was that they wasted an awful lot of water.

Here is a video showing the interior of a couple of the Eichler houses. Much higher end than the original houses, especially the kitchens.

Video

Interesting! As many times as I've driven past the PS exit, I've never gone there. I've always wondered....

Like most of the designs.
Still not a fan of the desert, despite the time I have spent in Tucson.

I like the designs a lot.

They work well in an arid climate.

I'm also not a fan of the desert after living in Arizona.