The documentary "Frey I: The Architectural Envoy" (2018) by Jake Gorst focused on the first part of the life of Swiss-born architect Albert Frey. As you may remember from a previous post, the documentary looked at his architectural projects in Belgium, his experiences at Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret's studio and his experimental structures, such as the Aluminaire House, that revolved around Le Corbusier's five principles (pilotis or supports, roof garden, free plan, free facade and long horizontal sliding windows) and his Canvas Weekend House. That documentary closed with Frey's first projects in Palm Springs and his return to New York.
Jake Gorst's "Frey II: The Architectural Interpreter" starts with the architect taking a life-changing decision: attracted by technology and new materials, but also fascinated by nature and indigenous architectures and the juxtaposition between crowded cities and empty deserts, and in love with the possibility of shaping a brand new city in California, Frey returned to Palm Springs. Here he started developing an entirely new language based on the semantics of "desert modernism".
Between the end of the '30s and the beginning of the '40s, Palm Springs was an army post. Building material was scarce because of the war effort, but some materials were reserved to build projects for the army including civilian buildings such as schools for military families. The local community was slowly growing and it seemed to favour a modernist aesthetic. When the war ended, tourists started going back to Palm Springs while military families remained and developed this place, forming a forward-thinking desert community.
Channelling Mies van der Rohe's German Pavilion at the Barcelona International Exhibition of 1929, Frey designed his own house in Palm Springs – Frey I. The building was conceived as a laboratory of ideas that the architect explored throughout his life.
The house was a miniature version of the pavilion and represented the beginning of a new architectural vocabulary: it was a pristine piece of architecture, made with modern materials such as reflective aluminium; it was based on a simple structure with walls that extended into the space around the house to make it look bigger and featured free flowing panels in pre-made materials. There was a sense of natural perfection between the interior and the exterior of the house, with the former naturally flowing into the latter, the rooms extending into a swimming pool surrounded by chaise lounges carved in concrete.
As the years passed, Frey worked further on this structure, combining together industrial and organic forms, adding on the roof a fascinating sci-fi-like design, a circular bedroom with porthole windows, features inspired by the punctured domes and roof of buildings that let the light of the sun in, such as the observatory El Caracol, a unique structure at the pre-Columbian Maya civilization site of Chichen Itza. Frey also designed modern and elegant interior design pieces like his floating table that was suspended from the ceiling.
Other projects followed such as Raymond Loewy's house that took full advantage of the desert and featured a rounded pavilion and an indoor-outdoor pool, and the North Shore Beach and Yacht Club at the Salton Sea, reminiscent of a ship with circular portholes and corrugated metal features that contributed to give it a sense of lightness.
During this period Frey embarked in a series of journeys and shot 8 mm films of his travels (extracts are included in the documentary) while visiting Hawaii, Egypt and India, where he saw the Jantar Mantar in Jaipur and the buildings designed by Le Corbusier in India, like the Chandigarh Capitol Complex, structures that celebrated the sun.
The lessons learnt during his travels were applied to buildings that he designed in Palm Springs like the City Hall: moving from the Chandigarh Capitol Complex, Frey created a building that wasn't definitely your typical post-war city hall, but responded to the desert thanks to grid-like panels of white tube sections that let the sunlight pass, but also provided shelter.
Frey went on to study further possibilities to integrate natural elements in his architectures and combine technology and nature, principles that he applied to the Palm Springs Aerial Tramway Valley Station, with its structure immersed in the surrounding landscape, an idea that became also the starting point for the architect's second house in Palm Springs, Frey II.
The house was built around the boulders Frey found in the chosen location, a steep rocky hillside, and it was conceived not just as a mere house, but as an intimate experience, one simple space that opened up on a vast landscape.
The light building therefore did not disturb the surrounding nature, but it flowed with the desert, providing a functional and practical living space to this architect who loved nature and animals and longed to embrace the mountains, open vistas and natural settings. An avocate of desert living, Frey also had a passion for industrial off-the-shelf materials and for futuristic and complex geometric shapes as proved by the hyperbolic paraboloid of the Tramway Gas Station, an elegant shape floating in the hair and suspended on a simple base, an optimistic and dynamic design.
The best thing about this documentary is not just the possibility of rediscovering Frey's works (it is worth remembering that 11 of his architectures are now on the National Register of Historic Places), but also enjoying the sense of peace that his buildings and in particular his house Frey II convey.
Immersed in the wild, savage, natural setting with its yellow curtains blowing in the wind and the boulder above the bed protruding from the dramatic mountain backdrop, the house is not a utopian vision, but a symbol of simple and pure architecture, a place where it is possible to genuinely live a perfectly balanced life reconnected with nature.
"Frey II: The Architectural Interpreter" by Jake Gorst is part of the Architecture & Design Film Festival. Due to Coronavirus, the festival was rescheduled in a digital format and architecture and design fans based in the U.S. and Canada can watch the 17 films part of the virtual programme until today online. Tickets for individual films and all-access passes are on sale at this link.