Description
This five-bedroom, five-bathroom vacation house in Palm Springs, California, was designed to emphasize connection to the desert landscape while offering shelter from harsh climatic conditions. Large sliding glass walls open the living spaces and master bedroom to adjacent patios. Major outdoor rooms are enclosed by a row of movable vertical fins that offer flexible protection against sandstorms and intense heat.
A combined living and dining space, roughly square, lies at the center of the house. While the house favors an east-west axis, four long perpendicular wings extend in each cardinal direction from the living areas. Thoughtful placement of larger rooms at the end of each wing helps define adjacent outdoor rooms, with circulation occurring both indoors and out.
The south wing connects to the public realm and includes a carport and two long covered walkways. These walkways are separated by a massive stone wall and led to public and service entries, respectively. The east wing of the house is connected to the living space by a north-facing internal gallery and houses a master bedroom suite. To the west, a kitchen, service spaces, and staff quarters are reached by a covered breezeway. In the northern wing, another open walkway passes along an exterior patio, leading to two guest rooms.
Read more about this topic: Kaufmann Desert House
Famous quotes containing the word description:
“Why does philosophy use concepts and why does faith use symbols if both try to express the same ultimate? The answer, of course, is that the relation to the ultimate is not the same in each case. The philosophical relation is in principle a detached description of the basic structure in which the ultimate manifests itself. The relation of faith is in principle an involved expression of concern about the meaning of the ultimate for the faithful.”
—Paul Tillich (1886–1965)
“I fancy it must be the quantity of animal food eaten by the English which renders their character insusceptible of civilisation. I suspect it is in their kitchens and not in their churches that their reformation must be worked, and that Missionaries of that description from [France] would avail more than those who should endeavor to tame them by precepts of religion or philosophy.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)
“A sound mind in a sound body, is a short, but full description of a happy state in this World: he that has these two, has little more to wish for; and he that wants either of them, will be little the better for anything else.”
—John Locke (1632–1704)