In the world of modern architecture, a few names stand out—including Le Corbusier, the professional name of Charles-Édouard Jeanneret, the Swiss-French architect.
Less well-known internationally—but rather well-known locally—is one of Le Corbusier’s pupils and co-workers, Albert Frey.
Frey’s life and work are celebrated in a new exhibition, Albert Frey: Inventive Modernist, on display at the Palm Springs Art Museum’s Architecture and Design Center through June 3. The exhibition, presented by the Palm Springs Preservation Foundation, features architectural models, drawings, films, photographs and furniture—and took 2 1/2 years to assemble and complete.
The exhibition’s creator, Brad Dunning, explains that Frey (1903-1998) was born in Europe, and started his career there, but he was always fascinated by America, moving to New York and then Palm Springs.
“He felt America represented the future, and would welcome more new ideas than Europe. Everything about Albert was modern—modernism,” Dunning said.
Frey’s local work included hundreds of designs, including projects from custom homes to landmark buildings, including Palm Springs City Hall, the Palm Springs Aerial Tramway’s Valley Station, the North Shore Beach and Yacht Club (overlooking the Salton Sea) and the iconic Tramway Gas Station, now the Palm Springs Visitor Information Center. He also co-designed the Aluminaire House, an all-metal home designed in 1931 in New York that now has a permanent home in Palm Springs.
Frey differed from Le Corbusier in his approach to the relationship between architecture and its surroundings.
“He was a one-of-a-kind architect in the desert,” said Melissa Riche, founder of Preservation Mirage and author of Mod Mirage, a book on mid-century architecture in the area. “He came from Europe and had a new, international, pared-down approach to modernism, using durable materials that changed over time because of the environment.”
One example of Frey’s belief in the relationship between the man-made and the natural is the house designed for the industrial designer Raymond Loewy between 1946 and 1947. Dunning points out that “the swimming pool creeps under a sliding glass door into the living room. It’s whimsical and fascinating, blurring the lines between outside and inside.”
In the hillside house overlooking Palm Springs that Frey designed for himself in 1964, the materials are high tech—including glass walls and a corrugated metal roof—but the natural world intrudes, literally, in the form of a boulder that forces its way into the living space through an aperture in the wall, precisely cut to accommodate it. In Frey’s own words: “The contrast between the natural rock and tech materials is rather exciting.” He added: “I’m excited to see every day the varied spectacle of nature that is part of the house, changing with light and color, wind, rain, calm and the sun.” The house is now owned by the Palm Springs Art Museum as the result of a bequest by Frey.
Dunning, who knew Frey, described him as “quiet and soft spoken, yet animated when he talked about his passion—designing. He was always impeccably dressed, retaining his continental manners his whole life.”
His business partners did most of the socializing and getting accounts, so Frey could focus on design, Dunning said. “It was a good combination. Albert wasn’t an aggressive seller.”
Janice Synder, an ambassador for the exhibition, said of Frey: “He lived like he believed—man and nature, they complemented each other.”
Albert Frey: Inventive Modernist will be on display through Monday, June 3, at the Palm Springs Art Museum’s Architecture and Design Center, 300 S. Palm Canyon Drive, in Palm Springs. The center is open from noon to 8 p.m., Thursday; and 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., Friday through Monday. Admission is $10, with free admission during Modernism Week and every Thursday from 5 to 8 p.m. For more information, visit www.psmuseum.org/visit/psam-a-and-d-center.