A Place in the Sun

The Brass Standard

Architect Jill Lewis used cement tiles from Cement Tile Shop, inspired by those seen in French-style apartment buildings in Buenos Aires, on the deck and throughout the interiors of Casa Caballeros, her Palm Springs home, which she named after its Movie Colony street. Fleetwood doors foster an indoor-outdoor lifestyle, and the shou sugi ban charred cypress siding is from Delta Millworks. »

A boomerang-shaped Palm Springs vacation house optimizes winter and summer sunshine for year-round entertaining.

Written by Elizabeth Varnell

Photographed by Lara Swimmer

An RH Modern Cannele Collection raw brass chandelier hangs in the living room, and another illuminates the adjoining dining room. Lewis selected nine slabs of white marble from Arizona Tile’s stone yard for the indoor-outdoor fireplace and other fixtures throughout the house. The two long ModShop sofas in aqua-blue leather and walnut add dashes of color. »

In 1947, when Frank Sinatra first set foot on the sand-filled lots that would later blossom into Palm Springs’ celebrity-dense Movie Colony neighborhood, he dreamed of building a home in this sun-soaked oasis. Decades later, architect Jill Lewis and her husband, Mike Doyle, conjured up a similar dream when they stumbled upon an undeveloped 10,000-square-foot parcel here. The lot looked much like the terrain—rich in sand dunes and tumbleweeds but little else—that midcentury architects Richard Neutra, John Lautner, and Donald Wexler famously encountered while building here at the foot of the San Jacinto Mountains. Lewis and Doyle, who’d spent years living with their family in Asia and South America, decided to fashion a restorative vacation home for themselves in the serene Southern California desert.

Before launching her eponymous firm in 2007, Lewis, a Washington native who studied architecture at Washington State and abroad in Florence, worked at Seattle’s Lane Williams Architects for almost 10 years, developing a well-defined and transparent design process with clients. Drawing upon two decades of experience, the architect sketched her own home’s initial shape by hand but then set about trying to understand the site’s natural environment digitally. “I did a lot of sun studies on the computer to see how far into living areas light would go when the sun drops behind the mountains,” she explains. The lot’s western side provides a picturesque view of the formidable peaks above Coachella Valley, but the sunset’s blazing rays also originate from the same direction. “The living areas had to face south and west so deep overhangs could offer shade from the higher summer sun and western sunsets and yet we’d still have the gorgeous mountain view,” explains Lewis. She dreamed up a boomerang-shaped house tucked into the northeast corner of the lot, its elegant yet durable interiors flowing into an expansive shaded deck, bocce and shuffleboard courts, and a splash pool for her three children. An adjoining 75-foot lap pool fulfills the single request that Doyle, the CFO of Expedia-backed online travel agency Despegar.com, made during the design process.

With the sun still at the top of her mind, Lewis—following the lead of so many midcentury Palm Springs architects— quickly decided that the 3,000-square-foot house’s roof would be its unifying feature. “In the desert, your go-to solution is a horizontal roof plane cantilevered over the whole house,” she explains. A virtually flat roof (the arid region gets so little rain that a slope isn’t necessary) allows for extended overhangs that provide shade without blocking mountain views. As an added bonus, the flat roof keeps the house’s solar array, from Palm Springs–based Hot Purple Energy, completely invisible from the ground.

Then, Lewis arranged the adjoining interior rooms to foster leisurely impromptu gatherings. The family’s primary residence is in Buenos Aires, and Lewis explains that “our latest chapter has been all about socializing.” The Argentinian custom of gathering multiple families for meals prompted her to choose a large kitchen island where 12 adults can gather to mix drinks and craft picadas (appetizers), as well as two extra-long aqua-blue leather couches facing each other in the living room.

Lewis chose a minimalist palette of black, white, and shades of gray; kept furniture sparse to free up space for entertaining; and eschewed anything overly precious. All the house’s white marble—from the fireplaces to the kitchen island—came from the Arizona Tile stone yard in Palm Desert, and while Lewis expects to spot signs of desert wear and tear on it, she says she “doesn’t mind the little marks of life, the stains and watermarks.” The home’s unlacquered Newport Brass faucets and hardware are already showing unique dark brown and bright green patinas. “I like finishes to feel like they’re living, not polished,” Lewis notes. Such details, combined with the simple concrete floor running throughout the house’s interiors and exterior grounds, contribute to the home’s relaxed aura, as does the vitamin D influx from outdoors. “When you grow up in Seattle, you never lose your appreciation for nice weather,” says Lewis. “Now I find the relentless blue sky rejuvenating.” »

A skylight illuminates the 16-foot-long entry hall, where Lewis placed ornately patterned Above View plaster ceiling tiles—reminiscent of Hollywood Regency décor—on one wall. A trio of brass Tom Dixon Etch pendants hovers above Cement Tile Shop encaustic cement floor tiles in a floral design commonly seen in Buenos Aires, where the family has their primary home.

RH Modern’s Reclaimed Russian oak dining table in a smoked gray hue, paired with Eames molded plastic chairs sourced from Design Within Reach, sits on a rectangle of Cement Tile Shop floor tiles inset into the concrete floor. The couple found the hand-carved Buddha—sitting below a painting by Argentinian artist Daniel Callori—while bicycling in Thailand on their honeymoon. The kitchen island, topped with white marble and walnut, is surrounded by RH Modern 1940s Vintage Toledo leather bar stools and lit by a cadre of Burke Décor gold-colored hammered brass Lazy Susan pendants.