Donald Wexler arrived in Palm Springs in 1952 after a stint at Richard Neutra’s office in Los Angeles eager to build on a large scale with steel—hence the prefab Steel Development Houses.

At their A. Quincy Jones house in Los Angeles, architects Cory Buckner and Nick Roberts used permeable pavers to help the soil retain moisture.

Marcel Breuer Hooper House II Exterior Courtyard House View

Villain Arjen Rudd’s modern, canyon-top lair was an integral part of the Lethal Weapon 2 screenplay from the very beginning. Its role only grew larger as the more downbeat first draft of Shane Black’s script (Gibson’s Riggs was originally fated to die at the end) was revised by Black’s successor, Jeffrey Boam. The challenge was finding an existing Los Angeles–area structure that matched the one imagined on the page. John Lautner, the American mid-century modern master who apprenticed under Frank Lloyd Wright in the 1930s, designed Garcia House in 1962 for jazz arranger Russell Garcia. It still sits high atop the Hollywood Hills at 7436 Mulholland Drive. With its unique almond eye shape topped by a curved, parabolic roof and supported by steel stilts sixty feet above the canyon below, the house is also known as the Rainbow House, after the colorful stained-glass panels that dot its facade.

Schneidman House and owner, Kristin MacDowell (MHA 301). In 1946, a group of returning servicemen began talks of creating a housing cooperative to build a utopian community on a dusty hillside above Los Angeles. Soon, more than 400 families were on board, and the Mutual Housing Association was born.

Built in 1963, the Flansburgh House remains an architectural gem within Lincoln, Mass.

Segerholt Residence Exterior Driveway

Last year, Tahquitz Plaza, a business complex Kaptur designed in the 1970s, underwent a restoration, which he helped oversee.

The view as it appears today.

For a family of four, Ueda Design Studio restores the luminous-yet-drafty midcentury home of Alden Mason with warm materials and sensible restraint.

Deciding to buy a home comes with its own unique set of pressures. Oftentimes, it’s seen as a seal of adulthood, an acceptance of permanence, and perhaps most importantly, it also means that you’re about to spend a large sum of money; it makes sense that no one wants to go about it in a casual way.

Speaking to his original design, architect Saul Zaik says, “We were really just building boxes with a bunch of windows but experimenting with how you integrated indoor and outdoor spaces.” The house has seven different openings to the exterior, allowing different courtyard or patio settings for a range of outdoor activities, including seating for a gathering on the street-facing side. The Milfords hired Lilyvilla Gardens for the landscaping around the house, including variegated bluestone steps with thyme joints.

The Andersen Architectural Collection’s Eagle windows and doors provide the panes and passageways of the home.

The only grouping of Frank Lloyd Wright's early American System-Built Homes—built by Arthur Richards and designed with standardized components for mass appeal to moderate-income families—is situated in the Burnham Park neighborhood in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The four model 7A duplexes, one model B1 bungalow (shown here), and model C3 bungalow were added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1985.

With post-and-beam construction, a thin roof profile, and an open floor plan that facilitates an interplay between the interior and exterior, the Dwell Prefab Palm Springs by Turkel Design bears all the signatures of the architecture firm. The show home is its first in California, which allowed Turkel and his team to put extra emphasis on indoor/outdoor living.

We’ve gathered 20 of our favorite homes that maintain their midcentury flavor without sacrificing 21st-century modernizations and updates.

The team painted the exterior brick after patching it in places, like the section left by the removal of the door. “We could find the exact texture of brick, that classic Roman running bond, but we could not find it in the right color,” says architect Kailin Gregga. Painting the entire exterior unifies the façade. Rich Brilliant Willing “Hoist” sconces in Black was also added.

Located in Long Beach's Los Cerritos/Virginia Country Club neighborhood, the duplex occupies a 7,306-square-foot lot.

Its cast-concrete roof slabs evoke any number of desert sights—the fronds of a palm, the faces of stones, even the armored plates of an armadillo.

Tantalus Studio coaxes a Palm Springs home into the 21st century with fresh finishes and a sublime palette plucked from the desert landscape.

The Cree House feels larger than its modest footprint thanks to expansive walls of glass and the enormous front deck and rear patio, which link the home to the outdoors.

Residents are allowed a small swatch of land to plant gardens.

The unusual floor plan includes a long gallery that wraps a grassy courtyard. The family commissioned an aluminum sculpture by Los Angeles–based artist Evan Holloway for the space.

Perched below the Griffith Observatory and overlooking Hollywood is a lush lot crowned with four towering olive trees and a 1965 home designed by modernist architect Craig Ellwood. When a young couple purchased the home in 2018, it needed substantial work. For a historic restoration, they called on Woods + Dangaran, a local firm fluent in modernist history. The team completed a meticulous restoration of the home while keeping original components like the linear shape, open plan, and expansive windows. One of the most striking features is the original koi pond (a feature deemed so essential that its preservation was a condition of escrow) that is now crossed via a bridge that leads to a new lap pool—perhaps the biggest intervention on the property.

Jessica Helgerson Interior Design, with project manager and lead designer Emily Kudsen Leland at the helm, remade a Portland abode with a crisp paint palette: Benjamin Moore’s Wrought Iron for the cladding and Venetian Gold for the front door. The home was originally designed by Saul Zaik in Southwest Portland, complete with a wood-clad exterior, in 1956. As part of the renovation, landscape design was completed by Lilyvilla Gardens.

As you approach the Hilltop House from the covered breezeway that adjoins the garage, it is possible to see through the carefully placed windows to the greenery on the home’s other side.

Designed by architect Claude Oakland, this 1969 home is one of just a handful of the Gallery Eichlers—which are also known as the "Super-Eichlers." It's located in Walnut Creek’s Northgate enclave, which is the last tract of Eichler homes to be built in the East Bay. These models are coveted for their generous and well-designed floor plans—and 252 Clyde Drive is no different.

Built in 1962, the four-bedroom, two-bath home has already been spruced up with modern features that respect the home’s original midcentury modern character. Highlights include updated bathrooms with Carrara marble and walnut cabinetry, a private backyard, and a renovated kitchen with a pretty impressive "edible garden" off the side.

In 1962, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill architect Arthur Witthoefft won the AIA's highest honor for a home he built in the lush woods of Westchester County. Having fended off a developer's wrecking ball, Todd Goddard and Andrew Mandolene went above and beyond to make this manse mint again.