Pardon my ignorance, but please educate me – is there a non-aesthetic purpose for this, or is it just cool? We don’t have this where I come from. Does it stop water from flowing quickly off the roof, or prevent something from running around up there, or discourage sunbathing, or what does it do, exactly? I want a white roof with little white rocks on it for myself.

I love this house in La Quinta. I asked my California friend Darren why the town is called La Quinta, which means “fifth” in Spanish, and he wrote: “It’s called that because in colonial times, there were haciendas along major commercial routes that were reached every fifth day of travel. As a result, “La Quinta” is actually a fairly common place name in California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas.” Those days are over, obviously, and this is not a hacienda, but it seems to fit into this landscape more perfectly than many of the reproduction Spanish colonial jobs that flank it.

The house is a three minute walk from this landscape at the foot of the Santa Rosa Mountains:

Road seen from plane over the Sierra Nevada mountains, California.

Eternity or just Palm Springs, one or the other. Either way, you can tell from the tall red capitals it’s a warning.

Photo taken through plane window, upon landing in California. It’s strange that you can get an inadvertent tilt-shift effect by shooting through the curved window of the plane.

These midcentury modern houses are by the famed Los Angeles architectural firm Palmer & Krisel, which has built a phenomenal number of iconic houses in this style in California and Nevada. (See House of Tomorrow, for example.) And Bill Krisel is still working today! Of the photos below, the house directly below is new; the rest are truly midcentury. Above is a bungalow in the Las Palmas neighborhood of Palm Springs, “just a couple of doors down from the Lawford-Kennedy house where legend has it that Jack had a tryst with Marilyn.” All these photos are all by Darren, aka Chimay Bleue on Flickr, who introduced me to this architect and many others.

Below is Darren’s own Palmer & Krisel house in San Diego. It was designed in 1960 by Bill Krisel, who’s been back to visit it many times and must be very happy with the way it’s been preserved. (By the way, that’s Bill’s wife Corinne in the photo above, and that’s him, at bottom, in Darren’s house.) Darren and Elise renovated their Krisel house a few years ago, very beautifully as you can see. The before and after shots are particularly fun to look at – I could include only a few of Darren’s photos but there are many more here. Darren and Elise deserve a lot of credit for not demolishing this spacious bungalow, something Darren says is happening more and more often in San Diego and beyond. Such a waste. Of Bill Krisel, Darren says “Bill is probably one of the most creative and interesting people I’ve ever had the pleasure to know. He is very funny and warm and considerate. And his passion, skill, and talent in the field are truly amazing. He clearly needs to be better recognized for his accomplishments, as one of the first of only a few architects who understood how to truly realize the dream of making modernism accessible to everyday people, and successfully working with merchant builders to implement his designs in a very cost-effective way without sacrificing good design. I think he may be the most prolific architect ever, when you consider the total number of homes he’s designed in his life (nearly 40,000 single family homes).” Thanks to Darren for all of these photos! More in the Palmer Krisel Flickr group here.

William Cody, Architect, 1952. From the standpoint of the rainy temperate rainforest, desert landscaping is so seductive, so distant, so taunting. Red cactus soil, and an agave growing through the roof, and a boulder. Photos by Chimay Bleue (my friend Darren) by permission, on Flickr.