Hardwear Sessions

By Cynthia Houng

For years, we've entertained hopes of "retiring" to Joshua Tree and building a modernist "climber's ranch" near the park. We want big glass windows, lots of light, polished concrete floors, and not too much stuff. Maybe a climbing wall inside of a glassed-in atrium, where we can watch the storms whip through the Mojave Desert.

When I opened up the November 2008 issue of Dwell, I was pleasantly startled by the iT House, a modernist glass house designed by Linda Taalman and Alan Koch, a pair of Los Angeles-based architects.

iT House, Linda Taalman & Alan Koch, photo by Gregg Segal, courtesy of Dwell magazine

With its long, low lines and overslung roofs, the house reminds me of Albert Frey's House I, beautifully sited on a hillside in Palm Springs, and of Mies van der Rohe's 1929 Barcelona Pavilion.

Albert Frey's House I, photo by Julius Schulman