Palm Springs Art Museum Architecture and Design Center

The Architecture and Design Center occupies the former Santa Fe Federal Savings and Loan building, a glass box of mid-century modernism that sits low against the desert floor. E. Stewart Williams designed the structure in nineteen sixty-one. He used floor-to-ceiling glass and thin steel columns to blur the line between the street and the interior space. The bank eventually moved out, and for years the building sat empty, waiting for someone to repurpose a space defined by its transparency.