New Angles on a Desert Hideaway

Rising like a Flintstone cartoon house from giant quartz monzonite boulders, this desert retreat on a 10-acre site in Joshua Tree was built with wit, style and the intention of breaking--or breaking out of--traditional rules.

To begin with, the house is three structures instead of one. Windows and door frames are angled, not plumb. Exterior walls are painted periwinkle blue, “gluggy” olive (the architect’s adjective) and burnt orange, an otherworldly palette that is inspired by desert blooms such as yellow cups, lupine and poppies. “Combined in unusual combinations, earth colors are quite amazing,” says architectural designer Josh Schweitzer, who built the residence as a weekend retreat.

Building materials are basic: painted stucco, dry wall, exposed aggregate and simple cabinets. Likewise, the purpose of the house is simple. Schweitzer, 36, calls it a shelter, not a home, because 90% of his time there is spent outside. “It’s really a refuge to give us shelter when we want to be protected, a service center for us to cook, bathe and sleep. People don’t perceive it as a house--it’s not exactly your standard ranch with a roof,” he says. The three structures occupy 950 square feet. The blue building houses the kitchen, dining room, bath, bedroom and two suspended sleeping lofts. It is joined to the green building, which functions as the living room, with a voluminous 20-foot ceiling. The open-air, poppy-colored structure stands apart from the others. It’s used mainly for taking in the sunsets over the Little San Bernardino Range.

Schweitzer, best known for avant-garde restaurant designs (he designed City Restaurant, Rondo, Border Grill, and recently Border Grill 2), self-deprecatingly describes his work as “chunky, clunky and heavy-looking.” There is a certain monumentality in all of Schweitzer’s work. His initial attraction to monumentality came in the sixth grade when a teacher introduced him to the wonders of ancient Egyptian history. Now he designs his buildings, and their rooms, with unusual heights, and they have, he says, a certain spirituality.

The 300-square-foot living room has a ceiling as high as the room is long, giving the room an uplifting cathedral-like quality. “If I was to make a connection of how I perceived volumes and space, I would say, ‘They don’t have to be big, but they have to be tall,’ ” Schweitzer says.

And what about those windows and doors? Spaces between the nearby desert rocks inspired Schweitzer to design the nearly trapezoidal shapes. Doors loom high and irregular. “We’re so geared in our thinking that spaces must have a uniformity of heights,” he says. “My whole bent is to disturb that sense of reality. They’re not meant to be upsetting, just not the same.”