Category: Updates

After a long and winding journey, the Aluminaire House has finally found a permanent home in Palm Springs, California. The 1,200-square-foot, all-metal house arrived in the high desert early last year on the back of a freight truck, just in time for the annual Modernism Week celebration. The home was greeted by a hero’s welcome after having just completed…

The long journey to find a permanent home is almost over for the Aluminaire House, considered to be the seminal modernist prefab home. The house, designed by Albert Frey and A. Lawrence Kocher in 1931, is set to be permanently installed in a new Palm Springs park that will built across from the Palm Springs Art Museum, the…

Architectural tourism is a thriving industry for the city of Palm Springs. Our community boasts a rich architectural heritage of iconic commercial and residential buildings that draw thousands of tourists from around the world to our city. One of the many architects that added to our rich portfolio of significant buildings was Albert Frey. We…

The Aluminaire House Foundation will host a fundraising tour and reception to benefit the Aluminaire House during Modernism Week 2018. The tour and reception will be held at the Raymond Loewy estate in Palm Springs on February 23 at 3 PM. It will raise awareness of the 1931 Aluminaire House, a historically significant prefabricated aluminum…

Promoted as the first all-metal prefab house in the U.S., Aluminaire debuted in 1931. It was a case study by Albert Frey, fresh out of Le Corbusier’s studio, and fellow architect A. Lawrence Kocher, then Architectural Record’s managing editor. And the venue was a week-long exhibition organized by the Architectural League of New Yorkwith Allied Arts and…

The 1931 Aluminaire House, like The Architect’s Newspaper, is leaving New York and headed to Palm Springs for Modernism Week. A new Paul Goldberger-narrated video tells the story of the Kocher and Frey-designed house and its journey from MoMA to Long Island and—this morning—to Palm Springs where it will arrive on February 14. Read Full Article

This week, one of the most influential pieces of early modernist architecture began a cross-country journey from New York to its new home in Southern California. Aluminaire House, the historic, prefab metal home by famed Swiss architect Albert Frey, has been removed from storage on Long Island and is on its way to its permanent…

a 1932 article in Modern Mechanix magazine, the design of this three-story Long Island “skyscraper house” was touted as the “latest in homes,” with an all-metal frame and glass walls. What the story doesn’t mention is that this little house in the ‘burbs was designed as a case study home by noted architects Albert Frey (who spent his early years in Le Corbusier‘s studio)…

“In my youth, out of necessity, I had to produce a desired result with the least material and effort. Since then I found this principle to be a stimulating challenge to create, with aesthetic possibilities and gratifying the intellect. Today, realizing that resources are limited and with populations increasing drastically, conspicuous consumption is against the…

The Aluminaire House is headed for Palm Springs. Here’s how to sound smart about it Plans are now firm for the next big attraction for Palm Springs, an installation that may rival the Marilyn Monroe statue, at least for architecture fans. It is the famous Aluminaire House, designed by iconic Palm Springs architects Albert Frey…