| Located in the heart of the Old Las Palmas neighborhood of Palm Springs, this project was a restoration of a Buff & Hensman house designed in 1969 for actor Laurence Harvey. Our client purchased the nearly 1.5 acre tennis estate with the intent of restoring the property into a weekend destination and winter getaway for relaxing and entertaining. Prior to the restoration, the existing house had seen minor renovations and revisions to the finishes of the original design. Our firm’s goal for the house was to express Buff & Hensman’s original design intent while incorporating modern conveniences.
Our firm provided the architectural design, construction, landscape design, and interior design for this project. The scope of the project included alterations of the interior and exterior of the residence, as well as existing building systems including heating, ventilation and air conditioning, and electrical. The home comprises a great room, kitchen, master suite, guest suite, massage room, sauna, pool, outdoor bar area, and tennis court.
Throughout the house we eliminated formal or visual barriers, increased glazing, and added skylights to maximize natural light. In the great room, we removed a wall between the existing dining room and den to merge the spaces. Parallel to the dining area is the kitchen, where the absence of upper cabinetry opens up sightlines. A new metal screen, fabricated in the firm’s in-house metal shop, separates the kitchen from the dining area in a formal manner without losing a visual connection. Floating casework at the northern end of the dining area offers a pause, and wall space for the owner’s art collection, before crossing into the den.
Past the den, we combined the existing office and bedroom to create the master bedroom suite. We substantially altered and enlarged the master bath as well as the adjacent private garden. The bedroom opens onto an outdoor dining and bar area, then sauna and massage room. Opposite, on the south side of the building, we combined an existing cluster of three bedrooms into one spacious guest suite. Floor-to-ceiling windows throughout the house look onto the outdoor pool area.
At the client’s request, existing Saltillo tile flooring on the interior and exterior was replaced with terrazzo, extending to the pool. On the exterior, plaster was resurfaced, beams were refinished, and copper cap details were repaired. We refinished the plaster and terrazzo surfaces of the pool, which presented challenges concerning drainage. We adjusted the structural system of the house to allow the existing mass of the garage to provide shear for the remainder of the home.
As the landscape designer, we introduced new native desert landscape and softscape, lighting, and irrigation. The firm’s interiors department worked very closely with the client to select furnishings and art that simultaneously suit the home and reflect the client’s refined architectural sensibilities. |
