Palm Springs: a modernist oasis in the desert

Winter retreat of Hollywood stars starting in the 1930s, Palm Springs today houses one of the highest concentrations of Modernist architecture in the United States.

A car is useful for exploring the different neighborhoods of the city.

The Movie Colony neighborhood, with its 1950s modernist villas, once housed the winter residences of actors like Frank Sinatra and Elvis Presley.

Riding the Palm Springs Aerial Tramway, you pass in just a few minutes from the desert heat of the valley to the snow of the San Jacinto mountains.

Returning to the valley, the Palm Springs Art Museum displays modern art and California design alongside architecture itself being an example of desert modernism.

Towards evening, the Palm Springs Windmill Farm, at the edge of the city, lines thousands of wind turbines that harness the constant winds of the Coachella Valley.

The Palm Springs Aerial Tramway, with its rotating cabins, accomplishes a temperature jump of over twenty degrees in about ten minutes between the desert base and the snow-capped mountain summit.

The modernist villas built for Hollywood stars remain among the world's most photographed and studied mid-twentieth-century architecture by enthusiasts everywhere.