Welcome to Team Haverkate Real Estate Specializing in Mid Century Modern Desert Homes

During Modernism Week 2011, Park Imperial South on South Araby Drive in Palm Springs celebrated its 50th birthday and invited the public to tour its 31-unit condominium community.  Created in 1960 by one of the nation’s most noted residential architects, Barry Berkus, AIA, Park Imperial South’s remarkable Mid Century Modern design still thrives and remains virtually untouched.

www.parkimperialsouthps.com www.modernismweek.com

Berkus guided the tour and presented his take on modernism’s mark on architecture in Palm Springs and across America.  A video archive of the design tour and Berkus’ discussion is posted here at Team Haverkate Real Estate.

“Being acknowledged by those who live within the architect’s dream is the highest honor one can aspire to , and the fact that residents here have kept my dream in condition is a remarkable compliment,” Berkus said.

www.24-7pressrelease.com/press-release/barry-berkus-aia-to-address-modernism-week

Founder and president of B3 Architects and Berkus Design Studio in Santa Barbara, Berkus has remained on the forefront of residential design in this country and abroad for over 40 years.  His name is synonymous with innovation, and his firm has won hundreds of design and planning awards from regional, national and international competitions.

www.barryberkus.com www.b3architects.com

Berkus began college with a focus on economics, but he always loved to draw.  After attending Santa Barbara City College, he transferred to USC’s  architecture program, saying “It was exciting and I knew I’d found my place.”

He pursued housing, an industry that during the 1950′s and 60s most architects thought was “beneath them” and many were convinced they couldn’t make a living at it.

“When we started, housing was looked down upon,” he recalled. “I lead a design panel at the National Association of Home Builders, but couldn’t do one at the American Institute of Architecture.”

“I had a goal to change the way housing looked,” he said.  “I wanted to give it a sculpted feeling, an innovative component to nurture people.  I strived to use volume, light and shapes in my homes.”

Berkus’ ability to produce house plans quickly also turned the odds in his favor.

“Housing as a product has to move on and off the boards quickly because it didn’t pay very well,” he said.

www.noozhawk.com/article/120309_barry_berkus

Berkus began as an intern for noted Palm Springs architect William Cody before opening his own firm and designed Park Imperial South at the age of 25.

During his talk at the tour, Berkus recalled sitting at construction sites for John Lautner projects, inspiring him to develop his  own unique design vision.  Berkus said Park Imperial South was an experiment in design and construction.  The distinctive folded-plate roofs were constructed in Oakland before being transported to Palm Springs where they were lifted into place by crane.

www.itssosunny.com/2011/02/20/palm-springs-modernism-week-home-tour-feature

“I wanted to design a space for people who could not afford an architect,” said Berkus of the project.

As his company went public, Berkus began considering modular housing.  He researched data at UCLA on every modular created up to that point and concluded that mobile homes were the only successful factory-built house that made its manufacturer money and lasted for any length of time.

“Let’s change the way housing is built,” he said when he approached national builders with the first “smart house” and various homes on wheels.

“I’ve always gone the far edge of the planet in my thinking,” Berkus admits.  “I’ve always been interested in investigating.  I’m in my 70s now and I’ve failed a bunch, in part because security never interested me.”

“Architects, by nature, are optimists,” he said.  “I’ve grown by taking risks and assumed it would work out.  Even recently, with single family homes in Santa Barbara, I’ve had to build them and then people showed up to buy them.  I knew it was right.”

www.noozhawk.com/article/120309_barry_berkus

It seems Berkus was right about his long lasting design at Park Imperial South as well.

One objective of the Modernism Week tour was to demonstrate the complex’s design longevity both interior and exterior as well as the versatile floor plan.

Nine homes in varying stages of rehabilitation and remodel were open for guests to view.  Several units had been completely redone with new kitchens and appliances, upgraded bathrooms, redesigned patios and new flooring, while other units retained original design elements such as range hoods, cabinetry and intercom entertainment systems.

For the past 10 years, Park Imperial South homeowners association has been restoring the complex with new landscaping, entrance signage, lighting and wood paneling to each home’s entrance.  The Palm Springs Preservation Foundation has granted funds to continue restoration projects, and the sold-out tour during Modernism Week benefited the development’s renovation projects.

www.itssosunny.com/2011/02/20/palm-springs-modernism-week-home-tour-feature

For Berkus, thinking outside the grid comes naturally and so does the task of reinvention.

“Everything has to fall apart so you can come up for air,” he said.  “Residential architecture is about romance, learning, fulfillment of a journey.  It should never be below you to do housing.”

www.residentialarchitect.com

Palm Springs has a proud heritage of innovative Mid Century Modern architecture in public buildings as well as custom, tract and condominium homes.  For a personal tour of Mid Century Modern properties currently for sale, contact Ralph Haverkate at ralph@RalphHaverkate.com.

– Pamela Bieri

Welcome to Ralph Haverkate’s Modern Homes Blog

Retro Martini Party, February 25, 2011 at the William F. Cody-Designed Jorgensen-Mavis House

Benefits PS Preservation Foundation

Join event sponsor Haverkate Real Estate at the 2011 Retro Martini Party on Friday, February 25 from 5 to 8 p.m. at the Jorgensen-Mavis House, designed by Desert Modernist Architect William F. Cody, in Thunderbird Country Club.

Tickets are $125 per person and benefit the Palm Springs Preservation Foundation.  Pre-paid tickets are available only at www.pspreservationfoundation.org. Attendees will receive a complimentary William F. Cody Tribute Journal.

Dress in your swankiest “rat pack” threads!

One of Palm Springs’ noted Mid Century Modern architects, William Cody left his indelible mark throughout the desert and Southern California with dozens of public buildings, country clubs and private homes.

Among Cody’s first desert designs were the 1947 Del Marcos Hotel followed by numerous Palm Springs projects, notably the conversion of the Thunderbird Dude Ranch to the Thunderbird Country Club and later Tamarisk and El Dorado country clubs, the Racquet Club and the Tennis Club.

While many of these clubhouses have been demolished and rebuilt or heavily remodeled, Cody’s work is still very much alive in custom residences throughout the desert such as the Jorgensen-Mavis residence (1954) that is featured at the Retro Martini event, and landmark buildings, St. Theresa’s Catholic Church and Convent (1966-688), the Palm Springs Library (1973), The Tennis Club Condominiums, and the dramatic entrance of the Spa Hotel (1962) among others.  www.moderndeserthome.com/index.php/architects/william-cody

His Mid-Century Modern classic, The Horizon Hotel (also called L’Horizon), built in 1952 and located at 1050 East Palm Canyon Drive, was rebuilt from the ground up in 2004, restoring the original architecture and updating its amenities. www.hotel-online.com/News/PR2008_1st/Feb08_HorizonPS.html

The hotel was acquired by Dave Scharf, a real estate developer from Portland, Oregon, who commissioned architect and former Cody associate Frank Urrutia to complete the two-year renovation.  Scharf obtained the original blueprints and numerous vintage photographs of the hotel by famed architectural photographer Julius Shulman, to preserve much of the hotel’s original character.

The results highlight Cody’s design throughout.  Most notably are its low slung ceilings and absence of any 90-degree angles.  The 22-bungalow style rooms feature 102 and 78 degree angles.  The Horizon Hotel spotlights Cody’s influence on the rich architectural history in Palm Springs.

Cody originally built the hotel for Hollywood mogul Jack Wrather and his wife actress Bonita Granville, best known for her portrayal as Nancy Drew in the Nancy Drew movies series from 1938-39.

Wrather, an oil millionaire from Texas, became part of the Hollywood scene by producing “Lassie” and “The Lone Ranger” founding KCET-TV and building the Disneyland Hotel.  The Horizon Hotel became the couple’s getaway for themselves and their many Hollywood friends including Marilyn Monroe, Betty Grable and Rosalind Russell.  www.thehorizonhotel.com.

Born in 1916 in Dayton, Ohio, and raised in Los Angeles, Cody began working in architecture in the 1930s with Cliff May while attending the University of Southern California’s School of Architecture.  He received his degree in 1942.

In 1945, Cody was retained to alter the Desert Inn, his first Palm Springs commission.  He completed the Del Marcos hotel in 1947, a work that was recognized by the Southern California chapter of the AIA.

During Post World War II, Cody’s work flourished in Palm Springs and he moved his practice and family here in 1950. In 1960, he began nearly a decade of work altering and expanding the Palm Springs Spa Hotel.  His specialization in country clubs let to commissions in Los Angeles, San Diego and San Francisco as well as Phoenix, Scottsdale and Lake Havasu, Arizona, and even projects in Mexico and Cuba.

www.lib.calpoly.edu/specialcollections

Cody had quite a reputation for carousing, earning the moniker “Wild  Bill,” according to fellow architect Don Wexler with whom Cody worked in the 1950s. Yet his work was exceptionally focused on the details of his designs, pushing the boundaries of his materials.

Author Adele Cygelman wrote, “Joints and door frames seemingly disappeared into walls,  He merged living rooms into terraces and gardens. Roofs jutted out twelve feet to shield the walls of glass.  Pattern and texture came from the tile floors, carved wood panels, and concrete-block screens with geometric motifs, all of which were meticulously designed by Cody to match each other precisely at the seams and angles where the planes met.”

Architectural critic Arthur Hess said of Cody’s work that “a distinct character can be seen in all of them.  It is a restless energy that brings a liveliness to his plans, elevations and details.  The radical thinness of Cody roofs or the daring reach of a cantilever are clearly the result of a wrestling match between the architect and the materials and the laws of physics; that energy and striving remains in the building.”

Hess notes that “the fact that Cody could take an established vocabulary and style and reinterpret it so vividly ranks him among the best of mid-century California designers.”

www.activerain.com/blogsview/1174597/willian-f-cody-faia-famed-mid-century-architect

In a recently re-published story and interview with Cody from the August 1964 issue of Palm Springs Life, Cody describes his philosophy of architecture:

“Architecture must guide the future of our culture, a three-dimensional sculptured concept conditioned by proportion, the secret of great building.  Father to the arts, it embraces man’s finest endeavors and, since the inception of time, has inspired progress and served to formulate a better way of life.”

www.palmspringsrealestatenews.com/palm-springs-noted-architect-william-cody

Palm Springs and the California desert are a treasure trove of Mid-Century Modern homes, many of which were designed by William Cody.   For a tour of Cody’s and other architectural masterpieces available for sale, contact Ralph@ RHaverkate. com.

– Pamela Bieri

Welcome to Ralph Haverkate Real Estate, Your Source for Mid-Century Modern Homes in the Palm Springs  Area

Tennis Club and Sunnylands Architect A. Quincy Jones’ Work Continues To Be Relevant

Tennis Club Pool Part of Palm Springs Art Museum  Symposium November 21; Sunnylands Undergoing Restoration as Art and Education Center

The Palm Springs Art Museum at www.psmuseum.org,  is sponsoring a two-day education event, Backyard Oasis Symposium: The Swimming Pool In Southern California Photography, 1945-1980, Nov. 20 and 21.  A tour of significant Palm Springs pools on the second day of the symposium concludes with a reception at the A. Quincy Jones-designed Tennis Club pool.

The event is sponsored by the museum’s Architecture and Design Council, but is open to the public.  Cost is $125 for non members.  For information, contact Brooke DeVenney at (760) 322-4818 or bdevenney@psmuseum.org.

In 1947, Jones and associate Paul R. Williams collaborated to redesign the Tennis Club, then owned by Palm Springs pioneer Pearl  McCallum McManus.  Initially, the project was to renovate and expand club’s kitchen, swimming pool and tennis courts.  But it grew to include creating a new dining room — the Bougainvillea Room which is literally carved out of the mountain’s rock face –as well as a snack bar, cocktail lounge and terraces for outdoor dining and relaxing.

For Jones and Williams, the challenging hillside project with falling rock, extreme temperatures and a difficult site became a “test laboratory” to find solutions while preserving and  incorporating the impressive desert view.

In a 1947 Southwest Builder and Contractor article, Jones said, “Natural stone found at the site provided the opportunity for a fresh handling of an ancient material as well as a medium for tying the structure into its natural setting.”  Concrete,  durable and plastic enough to mold to the rock, was used extensively as was glass to dissolve the boundaries between interior and exterior.

The Tennis Club became  ”an interesting and successful example of contemporary architectural concepts at their best” for incorporating old structures with new and combining interior function with exterior environment  www.paulrwilliamsproject.org.

Although the Tennis Club building has since been remodeled, the huge oval pool remains a focal point in the oasis-styled landscape. A gallery of Julius Shulman’s iconic photos of the Tennis Club and grounds in the 1940s compared to recent photos may be viewed at www.paulrwilliamsproject.org/gallery/1940s-places-of-liesure/.

The successful Los Angeles-based architect and educator continued to use concrete, glass, stone and steel into his work that bridged the gap between custom-built and developer built homes.

“While in private practice in Los Angeles from 1937, his houses set a standard of excellence that affected all house design of the postwar period, especially the tract house, to which he was one of the few to give architectural consideration,” according to authors of www.aquincyjones.com.

Jones was a pioneer in “greenbelt” planning, raising the level of the tract house in California by surrounding them with gardens integrated into the landscape,” according to Cory Buckner in her book A. Quincy Jones, published by  Phaidon  www.arcspace.com/book/Quincy_Jones/quincy_jones_book.html.

During his 30-year association with building magnate Joseph Eichler, Jones and another partner, Frederick Emmons, designed thousands of homes, reflective of Eichler’s objective to “exceed the quality provided by ordinary builders, but affordable to middle-class American home buyers.” www.eichlernetwork.com/ENStry20.html.

Among Jones’ signatures, coffered ceilings and courtyards that create openness, were prescribed in a 1948 remodel of Town and Country Restaurant in downtown Palm Springs in 1948.  A coffered ceiling lounge overlooked a garden courtyard and while a dramatic wooden trellis that mimicked the ceiling divided the outdoor space.  The coffered ceiling was patterned after one Jones had designed for his own first home in Los Angeles.  See early Julius Shulman photos of the property at www.pspreservationfoundation.org/pdf/center_nomination.

Jones’ larger projects grew out of his solutions for smaller residences, particularly integrating mechanical systems into the roof for better efficiency.  Some examples are the 1959 Biological Sciences Building on the UC Santa Barbara campus and the 1967 Chemistry Building on the UC Riverside campus:   Both roofs are dominated by  a continuous cap that contains mechanical systems.  The interior concrete coffered ceilings carry conduits for wiring, air conditioning and so forth.

Jones’ penchant for multi-level plazas and open court yards was adapted  for the 1972 Annenberg School of Communications at the University of Southern California at which Jones was a professor and dean of architecture from 1951 through 1967 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A._Quincy_Jones.).

In their commercial as well as residential projects, Jones and Emmons dissolved boundaries between indoor and outdoor spaces through atrium gardens, courtyards, sliding glass doors and floor to ceiling glass walls,  and clerestory windows providing natural  light in working or living spaces  www.eichlernetwork.com/ENStry20.html . Perforated metal panels, exposed masonry block walls, obscure and clear glass, as well as wood and stone were some of the innovative building materials they used in their projects.

Jones’ work in the desert gained even more prestige when in the mid-1960s, Ambassador Walter Annenberg commissioned him  to design Sunnylands in Rancho Mirage, a 25,000 square foot Mid-Century Modern house located in the middle of Annenberg’s 200-acre landscaped estate and private golf course. The project was completed in 1966. www.sunnylands.org/nr_april_2010.php.

For nearly 40 years afterward, the Annenbergs typically spent about five months at Sunnylands where they entertained United State Presidents, British royalty, international political figures, and cultural and entertainment icons.  Walter Annenberg died in 2002 and Lenore in March 2009.

In keeping with the Annenberg bequest, the Annenberg Foundation Trust at Sunnylands is building an education center on a15-acre site adjacent to the Sunnylands estate and renovating and restoring the original property.

In November 2011, the new Sunnylands will open a 215-acre public attraction with a visitor center, desert garden, historic house, golf course, solar farm and other 21st-century environmental upgrades.  The new Sunnylands will be both an historic house museum as well as a site for retreats and summits. www.sunnylands.org.

“Sunnylands is one of about 150 parks, and residential, commercial and civic developments across the country which have been designated as pilot projects of the Sustainable Sites Initiative or SITES, a new rating system aimed at promoting eco-friendly land developments,” writes K Kaufmann in Desert Magazine, Sept. 2010. www.mydesert.com/archives

Jones’ innovative work continues to be relevant into the next century as appreciation for the modernist movement grows.  Palm Springs area has one of the highest concentrations of Mid-Century Modern homes in the world.  For a tour of desert modern homes currently for sale, contact www.HaverkateRealEstate.com.

– Pamela Bieri