A sculpture called home

“A living piece of art” is how owner David Garthwaite describes his two-tier indoor-outdoor retreat in Rancho Mirage.

From the air, the home looks like fragments of earthenware strewn in the desert. The house, at an elevation of 400 feet, is in the foothills of the Santa Rosa Mountains.

Although Garthwaite is a builder-developer, T.R. Noye Construction Inc. framed and built the recently completed house. Guy Dreier, a Palm Desert-based architecture/interior designer, used wood, glass, stone and wall finishes such as Venetian plaster to fashion the house as a work of art.

“We created an organic look of shapes, forms and materials,” said Dreier of Habitat/Guy Dreier Designs. The result is a structure with butterfly roofs, angles, curves and extensive windows.

Glass plays a major role in this home, built on upper- and lower-level pads connected by a glass-and-steel staircase.

There are three glass-art fireplaces in the house. The living room turns into an indooroutdoor living space when its electronically controlled glass wall is opened to an adjoining terrace that includes a fire pit and infinity pool as well as a patio for barbecuing and entertaining.

About this house: For the owner, the view is the thing, and the glass walls open the house to vistas of the Coachella Valley from Palm Springs to La Quinta. Garthwaite’s favorite room is one of the bedrooms from which he can see the desert at sunset. His home office has hillside views of bighorn sheep, and even the step-down wet bar from the pool-patio area has a view.

The house is an award-of-merit winner in the 2006 Gold Nugget competition for the best custom home over 10,000-square-feet category. The annual design contest is sponsored by the PCBC (Pacific Coast Builders Conference) and Builder magazine.

Asking price: $12.5 million includes most of the furnishings.

Size: The 11,000-square-foot house is on 6.75 acres, a one-mile drive to Highway 111.

Features: There are four master bedrooms and eight bathrooms, a split-level conversation room and a media room with a wet bar and billiards.

Where: Rancho Mirage

Listing agent: Valery Neuman of Dyson & Dyson Real Estate Associates, Palm Desert, (760) 779-0999.

To submit a candidate for Home of the Week, please send color interior and exterior photos on a CD with caption information and a detailed description of the house, including what makes the property unusual, to Ruth Ryon, Real Estate Section, Los Angeles Times, 202 W. 1st St., Los Angeles, CA 90012. E-mail homeoftheweek@latimes.com.