Palm Springs, Modern Architecture, and Herb Greene

Left to right: Moderator with Alan Hess, Lila Cohen, Craig Lee.

Modernism Week, celebrated annually in Palm Springs, is a melange of housing tours, cocktail parties, and lectures. It is one of the biggest tourism opportunities for Palm Springs and a chance to disseminate its unique modern image to the world. For aficionados of Modern architecture, the 2023 offerings did not disappoint. During the event I served as part-time docent at Desert Lanai, a Charles Dubois-designed condo project from 1965.  Andy Farr and five other Desert Lanai residents opened their homes to an international audience seeking a glimpse of mid-century modern architecture not normally available to the public. (Pictures below.) For me, the highlights of the week were the many lectures covering minutiae of modernism with a high level of academic discipline. Topics like “Googie” architecture were treated with depth and respect not usually associated with the subject. Another panel explained in detail the restoration of architect Paul Williams’s home in Los Angeles. And my personal favorite was a panel discussion on Herb Greene, who studied architecture under Bruce Goff at the University of Oklahoma (my alma mater) in the 1950s. 

The Herb Greene panel was important because it broadened the discussion of Modernism in significant ways. It is easy to reduce Mid Century Modern (MCM) architecture and lifestyles to a bundle of cliches: flat roofs, breeze block, martini bars, starburst wall clocks, and Mad Men color schemes. These are cliches worth loving—don’t get me wrong—but there is much more to Modern architecture. An examination of Herb Greene’s work lifts Modernism out of a stylistic rut. In fact, I believe we should stop thinking about Modernism as a style; it is more correctly understood as a philosophy. The pioneers of Modern architecture believed they were creating a new way of living with open floor plans, connections to nature, and optimism for the future. They prized innovation, creativity, and experimentation. Unlike most styles, where you can choose from a pattern book of approved architectural elements to create an acceptable simulacrum of Colonial or Gothic architecture, Modernism demands that we look at deeper connections between client, site, and materials. 

Herb Greene's Prairie House, Norman, OK. (1960)

Prairie House detail.

Herb Greene pictured with Lila Cohen.

The centerpiece of the Herb Greene panel was a film (a work in progress) by Greene’s niece, Lila Cohen, Remembering the Future with Herb Greene. Architect and nascent filmmaker Cohen presents Greene and his work as an ongoing exploration of the meaning of shelter. Greene started that exploration as a young man by traveling to Oklahoma to meet Bruce Goff. He came out of that meeting saying, “I have met my first genius.” I can personally attest to the genuineness of that sentiment, because that was exactly what I said after my first meeting with Goff some years later. 

Bruce Goff with unidentified student at Greene's Prairie House. 

Greene studied under the genius of Goff and went on to create a body of work uniquely his own. Greene’s work can be startling when first encountered. It uses materials in unexpected ways. Interiors can be transparent or cavelike, depending on the desired mood. His architecture is blithely non-orthogonal, demanding critical thinking by the user to be understood, but it rewards the effort with a new sense of what architecture could be. In addressing what could be, it looks to the future. 

Herb Greene's Cunningham residence. (1962)

Lila Cohen’s advisors for the film project include historian Alan Hess, author of over twenty books on architecture, and Craig Lee, curator of the Goff archives at the Art Institute in Chicago. Both gentlemen were on the panel and provided context on Greene’s rightful position in the panoply of modern architects. Hess linked Greene to an American architectural lineage that goes back to the nineteenth century: Sullivan, Wright, Goff, and the mid century generation that includes Lautner, Neutra, Dubois, and Greene. Lee emphasized the importance of the Goff connection. The built works of Goff and Greene do not look anything alike. But in their shared opposition to the conventional architecture of the time, it is obvious that Greene fully absorbed Goff’s assertion that “there should be as many styles of architecture as there are clients.” It would be difficult to find any definition of individualism more fine-grained than that. 
There is an MCM revival going on right now. It seems to be a national phenomenon in residential architecture. And, in commercial architecture, Modernism never went away. This is an ideal time to reassess what we mean by Modernism. Herb Greene and his work point toward an alternative to the pattern book approach. Modern architecture, thought of as a philosophy rather than a style, is an ongoing revolution that invites continuing examination. Lila Cohen’s documentary film is part of that examination. 

Andy Farr residence at Desert Lanai. 

Charles DuBois's Desert Lanai. (1965)