The Aluminaire House Foundation has gifted the Aluminaire House™ Exhibit to the Palm Springs Art Museum as a part of their permanent collection. The icon of modernist design has been reconstructed in place of the south parking lot of Palm Springs Art Museum.

Aluminaire House has recently been listed by Architectural Record as one of the most important buildings completed worldwide in the past 125 years.

Swiss-born architect Albert Frey (1903-1998), arguably the most significant architect to have worked in the Palm Springs region of California, established the style of architecture that has become known as “desert modernism.” Having trained with Le Corbusier amongst a group of international colleagues, Frey brought a European sensibility when he came to New York and began collaborating with the American architect A. Lawrence Kocher in 1930.

Over a period of roughly five years, the two made significant contributions to the American modernist movement, including the creation in 1931 of Aluminaire House, the icon of modernist design that has been recently donated to Palm Springs Art Museum.

In 1931, the Allied Arts and Industries and the Architectural League of New York unveiled the starkly modern, all metal ‘Aluminaire’ home, constructed mostly of aluminum and glass components. It was intended to be mass-produced and affordable, using inexpensive, off-the-shelf materials. Aluminaire caught the attention of the public so much that in just one week on exhibit, more than 100,000 visitors toured the home.

It was the first all-metal house constructed in the United States, and of such importance in the architectural world that images of it were featured in the prestigious exhibition, “The International Style – Architecture Since 1922” at New York’s Museum of Modern Art in 1932.