LETTERS FROM PALM SPRINGS

Where mid-century modern went to relax, and stayed. Letters From Palm Springs follows desert modernism from the town out to Joshua Tree and the high desert: the architects who built for heat and glare, the Californian makers who gave the houses their chairs, interiors arranged around the pool and the mountain, and the hotels that made poolside design famous. We visit Frey House II, where Albert Frey, once of Le Corbusier’s Paris atelier, left a boulder on the hillside and built his house around it; the rock still divides the bedroom from the living room. Plus the date gardens and supper clubs, and the week each February when Modernism Week opens doors that stay shut the rest of the year.

Each edition carries the city’s palette, drawn here from pool turquoise and desert stone; notes on sourcing mid-century pieces in the desert, and what the heat does to them; and a letter to the city at the back.