HOUSE II Albert Frey 1964

FREY Albert Frey HOUSE II 1964 ORIGINAL CLIENTS Albert Frey ADDRESS 686 Palisades Drive Palm Springs, CA 92262 BIOGRAPHY OF ARCHITECT Albert Frey was born in Zurich, Switzerland in 1903. Captivated by American industrial buildings, he studied architecture at the Institute of Technology in Winterthur. After graduating in 1924, Frey traveled around Europe, working first in Brussels and then for Charles-Édouard Jeanneret (better known as Le Corbusier) in Paris, notably as a draftsman on his pioneering modern residence, the Villa Savoye. Frey moved to New York in 1930—the first Le Corbusier disciple to bring his tutelage to the United States—and started a partnership with A. Lawrence Kocher, an American architect who was also the managing editor of Architectural Record. Together, they published articles on the modernist ethos and designed four buildings, including the Aluminaire House, the first all-metal house in the United States, which was exhibited in a seminal MoMA- sponsored exhibition and mentioned in the 1932 book The International Style, now considered the definitive manifesto on early modernism. Frey first visited Palm Springs in the fall of 1934, when Kocher’s brother hired the partners to design an office and apartment building there. Palm Springs was a small resort community, a hideaway for the rich and famous full of hotels and sanitariums, and Frey loved its microclimate and landscape so he decided to stay. He found a local partner, John Porter Clark, but since neither one of them was licensed to practice in California, they worked under the name of Clark’s former employer, Van Pelt and Lind Architects. After two years in Palm Springs, Frey was lured back to New York to work on a new building for the Museum of Modern Art. There, he married the writer Marion Cook, and once the project was completed, the couple settled in Palm Springs permanently and Frey resumed his partnership with Clark. Clark and Frey were now licensed and could take on public commissions in addition to residential projects. Their firm would later be renamed Clark, Frey and Chambers when long-time employee Robson C. Chambers became a partner. The rise of modern architecture in Palm Springs was fueled by the post- 1 World War II economic and population boom. Before the war, most Palm Springs residences and hotels were stucco buildings in the Art Deco and Spanish Revival styles popular throughout Southern California. The idea had been to ignore the arid environment and treat Palm Springs as a lush, green oasis in the middle of the desert. During the war, the town became an army post and training ground, leading to an influx of soldiers and their families. After the war, many of these middle-class newcomers decided to stay in the desert and start small businesses. Palm Springs’ population almost tripled, creating an urgent need for housing and commercial buildings. Modernist architects capitalized on the city’s sudden growth to turn Palm Springs into a new frontier of innovative architecture. During his six decades in Palm Springs, Frey designed or co-designed residential, commercial and institutional buildings that are now considered classics of Desert Modernism. Some of his best-known projects include the Loewy House (built for the designer of the Coca-Cola bottle), the Palm Springs City Hall, the Aerial Tramway Valley Station and the adjoining Tramway gas station, all of which have been designated Class 1 historic sites. He continued to work into the late 1980s and died in Palm Springs in 1998, at the age of 95. Frey was a fellow of the American Institute of Architects, received the Neutra Award for Professional Excellence, and has a “golden palm star” on the Palm Springs Walk of Stars. 2 FACTS AND FIGURES YEAR BUILT 1964 MATERIALS EMPLOYED Concrete, steel, glass, corrugated aluminum COST TO BUILD Unknown ARCHITECTURAL STYLE Desert Modernism The subset of modernism known as the International Style emerged in Europe in the 1920s and ‘30s, just as Frey was receiving his architecture training in Switzerland and working with modern pioneer Le Corbusier in France. Inspired by industrial architecture, the style emphasizes economy of space, functionality, and the use of sturdy, affordable materials like glass, steel and concrete to develop universal structures that can adapt to any context. Frey was one of the first architects to bring the modernist ideology and aesthetic to Palm Springs, modifying the style to fit the specificity of this desert environment. Taking into consideration the year-round sun, rocky landscape, scorching hot, dry climate, and occasionally strong desert winds, he developed a unique and significant new type of modernism. His work in Palm Springs and elsewhere in the California desert addresses the sun’s movement through strategically positioned windows, sliding glass panels, and projecting roofs that provide shade, and it often incorporates existing landscape features like boulders, palm trees and cacti into the structure, bringing the outside in and vice versa. Frey’s regional approach to International Style architecture has become known as Desert Modernism. IDEAS AND PROCESS At only 800 square feet, the Frey House II is a small but functional rectilinear THAT WENT INTO THIS structure made of sturdy materials selected to withstand the desert sun, heat, STRUCTURE wind and drought. Its clean, efficient lines exemplify the International Style while its integration into the mountainside demonstrates Albert Frey’s desire to coexist harmoniously with nature. The house’s minimal steel-frame supports glass walls that showcase spectacular views of the valley below, while sliding glass doors provide direct access to the swimming pool and its paved surroundings featuring built- in agave planters, further blurring the distinction between the inside and outside. The house’s sloped roof projects out into the desert, blocking the sun and claiming part of the landscape as an extension of the interior. 3 Frey also brings the desert landscape into the house through his choice of colors. The curtains that can be drawn to cover the floor-to-ceiling windows are the same shade of yellow as the Encilla flowers that bloom in the region, and the corrugated aluminum roof’s bronze color merges with the surrounding rock outcroppings, while its underside is painted blue to match the sky. The Frey House II’s most distinctive feature is a large, rugged boulder that protrudes into the house, supporting its roof and creating a symbolic division between the sleeping area and the living room. Walls, built-in furniture and curtains are all designed to fit perfectly against the contours of this rock, which embodies Frey’s willingness to incorporate nature into his living space and daily life. More Baja Cresta boulders sit just outside the sleeping area, visually cradling the house. While it may look like the house is overpowered by these large boulders, the structure is designed with such thoughtful consideration for its environment that it ultimately asserts its primacy over nature. HOW THE ARCHITECT Frey spent five years selecting the perfect site for his second Palm Springs MIGHT BE RESPONDING TO residence. After two decades living on the desert floor, looking up at the A SITE PROBLEM mountains, he decided to locate his new house part way up Mount San Jacinto, on a steep slope overlooking the Coachella Valley. At the time, it was at the highest elevation of any private residence in Palm Springs. The location was selected in part because of a large boulder around which the house would be designed. The boulder would anchor the house, support its roof, and become part of its interior, the ultimate symbol of Frey’s belief that living in harmony with nature increases spiritual enjoyment. After settling on a site, Frey spent another year studying the movement of the sun in order to figure out the perfect placement for the house and swimming pool. He elected to place the garage on the lowest level, with the pool directly above it and the house sitting higher up the mountainside so that it would get the best view of the valley below. 4 ORAL HISTORIES AND OWNERS ABOUT THE Albert Frey ORIGINAL OWNERS The Frey House II was Albert Frey’s second private residence in Palm Springs. The first Frey House, built in 1940 for him and his wife, Marion Cook, followed the design principles outlined in Frey’s 1939 book, In Search of a Living Architecture. Inspired by organic forms found in nature, by traditional architecture, and by science-fiction, the house was an opportunity for Frey to experiment with new ideas. Futuristic features like a dining room table suspended from the ceiling, a cylindrical second-story bedroom with porthole windows providing 360-degree views of the desert, and corrugated metal walls curving in an amoeba shape around the swimming pool, offered a prescient glimpse of Space Age architecture. In 1960, Frey sold his first Palm Springs house to a real estate developer and set out to build a new residence for himself up in the mountains. The developer tore down the house and subdivided the two-acre property into smaller lots on which he built generic stucco houses. He eventually went bankrupt. Frey lived in his second Palm Springs house for 34 years and made provisions to bequeath it to the Palm Springs Art Museum. His will also specified that the Frey House II should be made available to architecture students and researchers. It’s occasionally open to the public for tours, usually during Palm Springs’s annual Modernism Week. QUOTES FROM OWNERS “I had a very careful survey made showing the contours and all the rock. Then I put up some strings to see how the design would work out.

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