An interview with Albert Frey page 2

V5:  Did you come in at a design level or did you do working drawings? How did you fit into that office structure?

AF:  Well, with Kocher I was the only man that worked with him, so I did everything.

V5:  Did you also supervise the construction?

AF:  Oh yes, that too. From sketching, we would discuss it to model making, to working drawings, then to site visits during construction.

V5:  So that was when an architect had full control.

AF:  Yes, that is right. It was not divided up the way it is today. That is one reason I did not want to be at a big firm? I worked for awhile for Philip Goodwin at the time he and Edward Stone did the Museum of Modern Art. I detailed the glass wall. Since there was no glass walls produced by manufacturers at that time, it had to be detailed in aluminum sections, extruded aluminum, and so on. It was a challenging position.

V5:  What was it like working with Edward Stone?

AF:  Well, I actually worked with Goodwin more. He did not know much about modern design, so that was why he engaged me to work with him.

V5:  So how did you come to the West Coast?

AF:  I had come to Palm Springs to design the Kocher-Samson building, which was for Lawrence Kocher's brother, here in 1934. Then I worked with John Clark, who was already established here. He was a traditional architect, so we got together and did a lot of work. Then in 1937 the opportunity came to work with Goodwin, so I went back to work on the Museum, which lasted two years. But I knew that I wanted to be in Palm Springs and not in New York, so I came out here to stay.

V5:  So you loved the Desert?

AF:  Yes, I like the Desert, and when you look at this view??

V5:  Yes, it is hard to go back.
 
AF:  Yes, that is right.

V5:  How did you discover this property for your house?

AF:  Well, the first house was down in the flat land, "House Number Two" (Arts & Architecture - Case Study Houses) and well, I am from Switzerland and I kept looking up at these mountains?.. (laughs). I thought someday I would like to live up there and look down. So for five years I looked, and it was just luck that I found it. There was only a turnaround in the road and no flat pad to put a house, just rock. So I was able to buy the property from the owner. But when he saw what I did, he was sorry he had sold it to me.

V5:  How has designing and building in the Desert affected your view of architecture?

AF:  Well, we had to design mostly in the traditional form. Most people wanted the traditional ranch style houses. So in order to keep the practice going, we designed in that style. There is a ranch property called "Smoketree Ranch" and I probably designed 50 houses there. They had to be ranch style, not modern. But whenever I had a chance I would do modern style houses.

V5:  How did you feel about that? The difference between architecture as a service and an architecture of vision?

AF:  Well, to keep an office going you had to know the difference. At the time, there was not enough Modern work to make a living. But it eventually came about and it was rewarding. You can always introduce new ideas, even in traditional architecture.

V5:  Did you find it difficult to develop traditional architectural projects when you knew there were modern solutions?

AF:  When I was with Clark, he was trained in the Traditional Architecture, you see. So he would do those jobs and I would do the progressive ones.

V5:  In this house, you have a large amount of south facing glass. This is something that the building codes now discourage. How do you compensate for the heat gain?

AF:  One thing is to understand how the sun is positioned. See the sun is very low in the winter and comes in to help heat the house. In the summer, it is very high and is kept out by the overhang of the roof. It does not even come through the glass into the house. So that is why the overhang of the roof is this way. As you can see, I have drapes and this (he gets up and pulls down a six foot, plastic mylar window shade), which is reflective on the outside. I also have a heat pump, which you must have for the really hot summer days.

V5:  Does the rock inside help? Does it stay cool?

AF:  Yes, not too hot and not too cool. More or less a constant temperature and that helps.

V5:  When Richard Neutra was doing work in Palm Springs, did you meet him? Did you visit his projects?

AF:  Oh yes, I know him quite well, as a matter of fact. In my other house I had a guest room and sometimes on the weekends he would stay there. The Loewy House and the Kauffman House were built at the same time and with the same contractor.

V5:  What was he like as a person?

AF:  Well, he was involved with his work, so we did not go out to dinner or do other things like that. He did his work all the time.

V5:  Did he watch your work?

AF:  Oh yes. He talked about my work in a book he wrote.

V5:  Were you able to talk about ideas, exchange thoughts with each other?

AF:  Yes. In 1932, when I drove across the country and back, I visited him and Shindler in Los Angeles. Shindler had come out first and then Neutra came. They lived together for awhile.

V5:  They seem very different.

AF:  Yes, they were. Shindler was much more amiable, I would say, very nice.

V5:  Had you seen the Neutra "Health House" for the Lovell Family?

AF:  Yes, I saw it in 1932 when it was first built, when I visited Neutra there.

V5:  Was that inspiring to the Modern Architects in this area at that time?

AF:  Yes, it was. It is, of course, a concrete architecture and painted white. Of course, photographs at that time were only black and white, color did not show. I thought lighter materials like aluminum would be more suitable. Masonry is fine in connection with the ground, but when you start overhead, I believe in lighter materials. These materials (pointing to the roof panels in his house) come from the aluminum manufacturer already with color so I did not have to do any painting. It came finished this way.

The only thing is you cannot weld aluminum to is steel, you know, so it must be screwed in the structural frame. There are about 600 screws here, (laughs) so it must be set in silicon. When I did the (guest bedroom) addition, I used "Corten Steel" because it can be spot welded to the steel frame. So that makes a perfect roof.

V5:  Because it oxidizes and then stops?..

AF:  And the color then goes with the rocks.

V5:  (laughs) Yes, those are Corten rocks.

AF:  When I submitted this house to the Building Department, they could not figure it out, but said, "you know what you are doing, so go ahead."

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