by kleinbl00

The WSJ article is better but paywalled.

The story of the home provides an insight into the architecture rivalries and shifting tastes of the day. Mr. Kaufmann, who was looking to build a winter getaway, originally considered architect Frank Lloyd Wright, who had designed his home in Mill Run, Penn. Designed in 1935, that home, known as Fallingwater, is an organic Modern that sits directly above a waterfall and has cantilevered terraces of local sandstone. It is one of Mr. Wright’s best-known works.

Eventually though, Mr. Kaufmann decided on Mr. Neutra, a younger architect known for his more Modernist approach. Mr. Neutra had worked under Mr. Wright before starting his own practice in 1930.

“Kaufmann’s son Edgar, Jr., an architect, historian and fond disciple of Wright’s, wanted his father to engage Wright again to design the new Palm Springs winter house, but the senior Kaufmann, while a warm admirer of Wright, wanted for the desert house a greater feeling of lightness and openness than Wright had imparted” to Fallingwater, writes Thomas S. Hines in the book, “Richard Neutra and the Search for Modern Architecture.”

A Classic Moment By The Pool

Palm Springs soon became a haven for Modernist architects like Mr. Neutra, John Lautner and Albert Frey, thanks to its bright, dry climate, which is well suited for Modernist design, with its flat roofs, shaded verandas and sliding glass. The Kaufmann home has been captured on camera by several notable photographers, including Julius Shulman, who shot a well-known picture of the home at twilight in 1947. The shot, a time lapse photo, shows a glow behind the desert mountains.

Mrs. Kaufmann helped with the setup by lying down in the garden to block the pool light, and a strange shadowy figure on the grass is the family dog, which sneaked into shot, according to Leo Marmol, managing partner at the architectural restoration firm Marmol Radziner, which worked on a restoration of the home in the 1990s. He calls the shot “one of the seminal definitions of Modern architecture in California,” noting that “it captured the Modern fantasy.”