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This desert dream house—perfect for the fashionable Bond villain—flew under the radar for way too long. It finally got some recognition in 2014 when it was put up for sale by artist Beverly Doolittle and her husband Jay, who spent more than five years building it, then refining it.
It was designed by super-organic architect Kendrick Bangs Kellogg, who immediately fell in love with the site—10 beautiful, naked acres in Joshua Tree. Beverly tells the Desert Sun: “He was jumping all over the rocks like a mountain goat. He had been looking for rocks to build on.”
The couple gave him free rein, and in 1988 work began on this concrete, steel, glass, and copper house, placed perfectly naturally on the rocky site and looking from the top kind of like a ribcage.
The house was finished in 1993 but interior designer John Vugrin spent several years making "tweaks." The Doolittles didn't move in until the early aughts, and by 2014, they were ready to downsize. They left for Utah and listed the property for $3 million, describing it as “the most important architectural house you may have never seen.”
The proud new owners are Manhattan Beach residents Kristopher Dukes, an interior designer, and Matthew Jacobson, a Facebook executive, who intend “to preserve it as a work of art,” according to the New York Times.
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- Organic Modern Estate [Official Site]
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