Hollywood producer Lucien Hubbard commissioned John Lautner in 1947 to design a residential fourplex in Desert Hot Springs, envisioning it as the prototype for a 600-acre modernist desert community. Hubbard, who had won the first Academy Award for Best Picture as producer of "Wings," hired the recent Taliesin Fellowship graduate to create four separately designed but interlocking living units. The larger development never materialized, leaving only this fragment of a visionary postwar resort scheme. For years the completed units served as a desert retreat for the producer's celebrity friends.
The fourplex is built from four principal materials: concrete, redwood, glass, and steel. Each unit connects to the next through a shared wall that serves dual purposes, functioning as one unit's outdoor garden enclosure and simultaneously as the back wall of the adjacent unit. This spatial interlocking is the key architectural move of the scheme. From the street, only the angular roofline reads above the perimeter fence. One unit features a full redwood wall separating the kitchenette from the living and sleeping area, earning it the nickname the Redwood Lounge.
