Craig Ellwood is credited with designing some of the most elegant modern homes built in California in the 1950s and 1960s, but he was not educated as an architect. Greatly influenced by Mies van der Rohe as well as Charles Eames and Richard Neutra, Ellwood’s designs were characterized by exposed lightweight steel or timber framing, and by floating wall planes separated by a shadow line or “flash gap” detail. Ellwood homes were spare, modernist and elegant.
On Saturday, April 2, 10 a.m., the Palm Springs Museum focuses on Ellwood’s work as the final seasonal lecture on the history of modernism architecture in Palm Springs. A tour of Ellwood’s most significant Coachella Valley work, the Max Palevsky residence in Palm Springs, follows the lecture. The late billionaire Palevsky was a computer technology pioneer, venture capitalist and philanthropist. Cost for the event is $25. www.psmuseum.com.
An influential Los Angeles-based modernist whose career spanned the early 1950s through the mid-1970s, Ellwood was recognized for fusing the formalism of Mies van der Rohe with the more casual California modernism, adapting the style into an accessible and fashionable vernacular. Continue reading “Desert Modern Architect Craig Ellwood (1922-1972) Lecture at Palm Springs Museum”