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“We also had to reassess the structure — we’re now in earthquake country and in a very challenging desert environment [...] To make this a permanent installation, we had to work with the city to assess how to permit it. We couldn’t classify it as a habitable structure because that would trigger the ADA and energy requirements, so we had to classify it as an exhibit." — Palm Springs Life
The house had sat dormant in a Long Island storage facility until its relocation was finally worked out in March of 2015. Site preparations took until last year to commence after the museum added the house to its permanent collection in 2020. The entire 37-year process earned an Advocacy Citation... View full entry
The Palm Springs Art Museum has shared an update on the future of the Aluminaire House three years after acquiring the Albert Frey and A. Lawrence Kocher masterpiece to its permanent collection. The home, which had been lingering in a local storage space since 2017, will now be reassembled and... View full entry
The Albert Frey Aluminaire House that was donated and shipped to the Palm Springs Art Museum about five years ago will remain disassembled in its shipping container for at least another year or longer. Key issues raised by the city may keep visitors from ever walking through the Aluminaire House, even when reconstructed. — The Desert Sun
Frey’s experimental 1931 house (created in partnership with A. Lawrence Kocher) first came into the museum’s coffers in 2020 after a six-year bout in storage and a $600,000 gift, which was supposed to go towards its permanent installation on a corner plot on the Palm Springs Art Museum’s... View full entry
The Palm Springs Art Museum has announced its acquisition of Albert Frey and A. Lawrence Kocher's Aluminaire House, a futuristic prefabricated home that will be installed at the foot of the museum adjacent to a new public park. The Desert Sun reports that the nonprofit Aluminaire House... View full entry
No longer confined to collecting dust in storage rooms, over a thousand slides documenting modern architecture's emergence in Southern California have been digitized by the USC Library, and are now available to view for free online.The approximately 1300 slides were culled from the collections of... View full entry
When it was unveiled in New York City in April 1931, the starkly modern Aluminaire House was an overnight sensation that emboldened an architectural movement. Designed as a case study by architects A. Lawrence Kocher and Albert Frey, the three-story house, which was built in 10 days, became the first all-metal prefabricated house in the U.S. — Palm Springs Life
After Sunnyside Gardens was a no-go, it looks like the Aluminaire House will be heading to sunny Palm Springs, California, according to an announcement by Palm Springs Mayor Steve Pougnet during a fundraising event at Palm Springs Modernism Week last month. The Aluminaire House Foundation plans on... View full entry
Lawrence Kocher and Albert Frey built the Aluminaire House in 1931 for an exhibition in New York City mostly out of mass-produced building materials donated by manufacturers. The project became recognized as an exemplary prototype of modern building forms and techniques at the time, while also... View full entry
Mr. Kundig first visited Frey House II about 25 years ago. "The design is a bit strange, but it completely resonated with me," he said. "I'm influenced by architecture that toes the line between rugged and beautiful, that demonstrates how they can be the same thing." He notes that Mr. Frey's simple design nodded to the local vernacular of humble miners' shacks. — WSJ.com
