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SCHWEITZER BIM
Josh Schweitzer

The Monument

Joshua Tree, CA

Located three hours outside of Los Angeles, The Joshua Tree National Monument is a park unlike other national parks. Devoid of leafy trees, green grass, large expanses of water; it instead stretches out across the high desert as an expanse of sand carpeted with giant boulders whose interstices are filled with cactus, thorny brush, yucca plants, and the parks namesake Joshua trees. The house is located on a ten acre site one mile outside the physical boundry of the park, but within the natural boundries of its landscape.

Composed of simple geometric forms, this 950 square-foot house is not intended to function as much as a container for living, but as a series of rooms to supplement the main space, the landscape. Intended to be used as a retreat for architect Josh Schweitzer and five friends, the house is actually an assemblage of one room buildings each containing a separate function. Built on one of the few flat areas that the site provided, the structures are completely surrounded by huge boulders. The monolithic forms of the buildings echo the forms of the rocks. An outside porch-like structure, painted a rich burnt orange, provides a shady outdoor space during the day as well as a vantage point for beautiful sunsets over a distant ridge. The living room is enclosed by 24 foot high olive green walls punctured by irregular openings which provide fractured views of the rocks and sky. An L-shaped volume, painted purple-blue, contains in one leg a small dining area and a kitchen with sleeping lofts overhead, and in the other, the bathroom and the single enclosed bedroom.

The house is constructed of simple materials, painted stucco walls, exposed aggregate concrete floors, and windows framed with redwood. The colors are the colors of the desert; the orange is that of desert flowers, the blue is the color of distant ridges, and the olive green is the color of the cactus and yucca plants. The interior colors are subtle variations on the exterior theme which enhance the monastic solemnity that imbues the space. It is simplicity of form, not the perfection or purification of it, and a creation of a symbiotic relationship with the desert that is the goal of the architecture. The building and the land are intended to be read as one living space. R.M. Schindler's ideal of the house as a permanent camp is very much alive at The Monument.