A Sublime Example of Organic Architecture in Joshua Tree

The Doolittle house should theoretically be hard to miss. Designed by architect Kendrick Bangs Kellogg in the 1980s, the 4,643-square-foot home rises up out of the California desert like an arachnid, its stony spines hovering in the landscape like a UFO just about to settle down. It should also theoretically feel menacing. Yet the house is both discreet and, once you’re inside, surprisingly cozy. It was these factors that attracted writer Kristopher Dukes and her Facebook executive husband Matt Jacobson to it when they first came to view it in 2015. “It looked like a desert mirage,” reflects Dukes. “I couldn’t believe that something so radical and beautiful could actually be built.”

A disciple of Frank Lloyd Wright, architect Kellogg made his name in the 1960s and ’70s for creating sculptural homes that ranged in inspiration from lotuses to onions to caterpillars in the way they dramatically unfolded on the landscape around them. With its 26 cast-concrete vertebrae that rise up as columns and then fan out to create a roof, this house is one of his most major masterpieces. It was commissioned by artist Bev Doolittle and her husband Jay in 1984. With interior designer John Vugrin working in conjunction on almost every single detail, it took 20 years to complete.

This is organic architecture at its sublime and also at its most dramatic. The underlying shape is soft and rounded like a pebble, and yet, like a desert plant, the house has an overarching spikiness to it. It is surrounded by a foreboding fence made of numerous metal blades that point upward (Dukes compares them to an "undiscovered dinosaur spine"). Its front door looks like a medieval portcullis. Inside there are no traditional windows; instead, light seeps in through the gaps in the ribbed roof overhead. Boulders and parts of the rocky land are integrated into the walls. The master bathroom backs into the hill and has a waterfall that trickles down the boulders. All these details blend to create a unique sense of being both inside and outside. “It does not sit in the hill, but it sits in the hill and with it,” describes Dukes.

While the big, dramatic statement of the architecture first drew the attention of Dukes and Jacobson, it was the micro level of custom detail that retained it. “The first time I experienced the house, I was blown away by all of the uncompromising details,” says Dukes, referring to a plug socket that is concealed by a bronze plate set with semiprecious stones and a door lever that works like a bicycle hand brake: You squeeze and pump instead of turning. Dukes and Jacobson chose not to interfere with the magic when they acquired the property from the Doolittles. “Keeping the house and its furnishings as they were intended was an obvious decision for us—how many pieces of architecture are built completely to the architect’s spec and preserved that way?” says Dukes.

This is far from living in a museum, though. It is a living, breathing home that continuously unlocks awe from its new owners. “The space is an inspiration of what’s possible to create,” says Dukes.

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Doctor Dolittle was famous for living with a menagerie of wild creatures. That sentiment is repeated in the Doolittle house, which is immersed in the wild outdoors yet protected from it with its spines and exterior shell. “As someone who adores the outdoors but is absolutely terrified of bugs, you can’t beat the feeling of camping without camping,” says Dukes.