What makes a house belong to the desert?
In Palm Springs, the answer often begins with a roofline. A thin edge reaches beyond a glass wall. A shaded terrace extends the living space. Stone anchors a building against the mountains.
Desert Modernism brought modern architecture into conversation with this setting: strong sunlight, open views, rocky ground and outdoor living. Architects including Richard Neutra, Albert Frey and E. Stewart Williams explored that relationship in distinctly different ways. Read more about Desert Modernism at Visit Palm Springs.
These seven houses, in Palm Springs and neighbouring Cathedral City, are part of my architectural sketch collection. Seen together, they reveal how much character can emerge from a few essential elements: a frame, a roof, an opening and the ground beneath them.
1. Kaufmann House — Richard Neutra
Richard Neutra’s Kaufmann House, completed in 1946, brings steel, glass and stone together in a desert home whose long horizontal planes remain immediately recognisable. Its client, Edgar J. Kaufmann, had also commissioned Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater. Visit California.
In my sketch, the rooflines stretch across the page while slender verticals hold them apart. The spaces between those lines give the house its openness.
What interests me is the balance between extension and restraint. The composition spreads in several directions, yet each line contributes to a clear, measured whole.
View the Kaufmann House sketch
2. Twin Palms, the Sinatra Estate — E. Stewart Williams
Designed in 1947, Frank Sinatra’s Twin Palms estate connects Palm Springs modernism with the city’s Hollywood history. Williams gave the singer a modern house that became an enduring example of the region’s residential architecture. Palm Springs Preservation Foundation.
The sketch follows the pergola into the distance. Repeated beams create a strong rhythm overhead, while the open sides allow the surrounding space to remain part of the composition.
That sequence is the signature here. Your eye moves through the drawing almost as a person might move beneath the structure: one interval, then another, towards the house.
View the Twin Palms, the Sinatra Estate sketch
3. Edris House — E. Stewart Williams
Edris House offers another side of Williams’s residential work. It belongs to the group of Palm Springs houses through which he developed his approach to modern domestic architecture. City of Palm Springs.
Here, the relationship with the ground is central to the drawing. Angular rocks gather beneath long roof edges. Their irregular outlines interrupt the measured spacing of the frame.
I read this signature as grounded and open. The house extends across the site, while the stones give the composition weight. Both remain visible, allowing the architecture and its setting to share the page.
4. Loewy House — Albert Frey
Albert Frey designed this Palm Springs residence for industrial designer Raymond Loewy. It is one of the domestic projects through which Frey explored modern architecture in the Coachella Valley. National Register documentation.
In the sketch, a firm overhead grid meets a much looser world below. Curving edges, rocks and broken outlines give the lower half of the drawing an informal rhythm.
That encounter makes the house compelling to draw. The roof establishes order, but the spaces beneath it retain movement and variety. The signature feels sheltered, porous and quietly playful.
5. Cree House — Albert Frey
Cree House stands in neighbouring Cathedral City. Designed by Frey in 1955, it extends the story beyond Palm Springs’s municipal boundary into the wider desert landscape. USModernist’s Albert Frey archive.
Its defining gesture in my sketch is lifting. Slender supports separate the main volume from the sloping ground, while the stair reconnects the two.
The drawing leaves much of that ground unfilled. This makes the gap beneath the house especially noticeable. A simple rectangular form gains tension through its position: supported, elevated and carefully balanced above the terrain.
6. Steel House — Donald Wexler and Richard Harrison
Wexler and Harrison’s steel houses explored prefabrication as a way to build modern homes. Developed with the Alexander Construction Company in the early 1960s, they brought architectural experimentation into residential construction. Palm Springs Preservation Foundation.
In this sketch, the folded roof gives the structure its identity. Repeated diagonals move across the page above an otherwise restrained frame.
The effect is both logical and expressive. You can follow the repetition, but you also feel its energy. Structure becomes the most memorable part of the house’s silhouette.
7. Frey House II — Albert Frey
Completed in 1964, Frey House II was the architect’s own home. Its hillside setting and incorporation of a large natural boulder make the relationship between building and landscape unusually direct. Palm Springs Art Museum.
My sketch brings the long roof edge, terrace and rocky slope into one continuous composition. The architecture occupies only part of the image; the terrain has an equally strong presence.
The house feels attached to its setting. Its character emerges from that meeting of precise construction and irregular ground.
Reading the desert through line
Together, these houses show the range within Desert Modernism. Kaufmann House extends. Cree House lifts. The Steel House finds rhythm in its roof. Frey House II draws the hillside into its composition.
This is what architectural sketching allows me to explore: the gesture that makes each building recognisable, and the relationships that give it character.
You can follow the individual sketches above or explore the Freezketch Atlas to discover more architectural signatures.