Fed up with the cold? Swap it for the warmth and glamour of Palm Springs. Next month, 150,000 people – plenty in Pucci-print minidresses and with beehive hair – will head to the Californian desert for the city’s annual Modernism Week, an 11-day festival celebrating its iconic mid-century architecture.
Some of the most popular tours hit hotspots such as the House of Tomorrow villa where Elvis and Priscilla honeymooned in 1967, and Frank Sinatra’s Twin Palms estate. But the real architectural gem has a less A-list origin.
What is now the Palm Springs Visitor Center began life as a gas station. Designed by Albert Frey and Robson Chambers in 1965, and photographed in the same year (above), its soaring roof was created to echo the nearby mountains and its subtle colours to blend in with the sand.
By the 90s the station had become defunct and was up for demolition until officials stepped in to restore it and, in 2015, it was added to the National Register of Historic Places. The landmark is now a tourist information point – and, unsurprisingly, the subject of thousands of Instagram posts.
Photograph from Palm Springs by Sheila Hamilton (Assouline, £85)