Hot Hot Heat

Very often, the courtyards and gardens built around modern homes become dead spaces-proposed areas of activity that fail to attract the real bustle and use their designers were imagining. It’s surprising, then, to see what designer Jill Hasman has accomplished with her family’s California getaway.

It was the weather that drew her here in the first place. The Hasmans were wintering at a hotel just a few blocks down the street for years before they discovered and purchased this 1972 modernist house. The location was right: a third of an acre 20 minutes outside Palm Springs. (Indian Wells, home to just a few thousand, is called the Beverly Hills of the desert.) The area, sheltered by mountains on all sides, averages 354 days of sunshine each year.

As for the house itself, "It had good bones," recalls Hasman. The place is blessed with 12- and 14-foot ceilings, plus a real modernist attitude in its major lines. But the bones were all that remained after a 14-month reno that cost $350,000. As the house had never received a facelift in its four-decade life, Hasman was obliged to install all new plumbing and electrical; every counter and carpet, every finish, fixture and faucet was swapped.

Since this would be a vacation home for Hasman’s family-she and her husband, Andrew, bring their three children here several times a year (sometimes grandma and grandpa come, too)-an escape from Vancouver’s rain became a key motivation. "Super-saturated colours that would look wrong in Vancouver just make sense in Palm Springs because the light is so intense," she explains. "The light is truly different here; I mean, you’re a different person five minutes after you step off the plane. So we wanted to create a bright, airy palette for the home."

Startling monochromes throughout the house complement the azure Californian sky. Tones are borrowed from the lemon and lime trees in the garden and are repeated in the tile of an outdoor shower or a coat of electric-green paint.
If the weather weren’t enough to entice one outside, there’s the swimming pool, the Jacuzzi and a trellis over the entranceway threaded with gardenia that release their scents each evening. An outdoor living space is equipped with both a fireplace and a lineup of mist sprayers, to help soothe temperature issues in the evening or midday.

Occasionally, one might wander indoors all the same, if only to appreciate the sunny qualities of Hasman’s design. Mid-century furnishings pop up where appropriate (a team of Eames chairs, say, around the dining table) but she hardly shied away from contemporary stylings. A series of laser-cut Medite panels above the living room fireplace creates a welcome wall of texture, something like a dimpled beach at low tide.

"The kitchen and bathroom were all divided up when we bought the house," says Hasman. "It was like a series of cubicles." No longer. Both rooms were opened up-to themselves and to the natural light that floods through each window.
No design feature is as important to the lived experience of a home as its relationship with natural light. When a designer finds ways to draw the outdoors in, and to remind people living there of the paradise outside, all the rest falls into place. Between Hasman’s citrus-sharp colour choices and her decision to gear this home toward outdoor living, there’s an undeniable quality of renewal in the air. When asked about the colours, the quality of light, and its effect on her family. She sums it up in three words: "You feel happy."