Zen Temple
July 1, 2008
Deciding the Palm Springs house needed a thorough makeover, Balbes and Ashley took it down to the frame. They then changed the floor plan and its flow by enclosing the porte-cochere to make a family room, combining the kitchen and utility room into one airy, light-filled space, and connecting both with the dining and living rooms in an enfilade facing the reshaped pool and landscaped yard, now filled with greenery rather than driveway. Off the living room, they created a fourth bedroom from the garage, and reconfigured the master bath, yielding discreet, glassed-in areas for a shower large enough to accommodate a table for body scrubs, and another to house a sculptural freestanding tub (from which one can look unobstructedly into the interior courtyard). For flooring, 12-by-24-inch limestone tiles replaced the purple porcelain, and continue uninterruptedly across the loggia and front walkway, diminishing the line between indoors and out—a line further blurred by the interior palette of creams and whites, as well as beiges and blue accents mirroring the colors of the surrounding desert and cerulean sky.
For furniture, low, oversize sofas and sectionals, ottomans, benches, and chairs emphasize comfort as well as ceiling height, and their overall aesthetic—geometric shapes with clean but not hard lines upholstered in earth-toned textiles—recalls the best of 1970s contemporary design (as do the sharper-edged low tables made from glass or acrylic and metal). Along with the white walls, these pieces create a monochromatic backdrop against which eye-poppers such as the vibrantly colored art hung throughout the public rooms, the black-lacquer Baldwin piano and Biedermeier-style table in the living room, and the locally made "Big Bang" hanging lighting fixture in the dining room, combust even louder.
This temple house raised, this vision realized, Ashley and Balbes’ temple in the desert, along with some of its furnishings, is now for sale. With the thought of coffers filled and partners repaid, Balbes, focused on new missions great and small and hungry for new residential converts, is moving on.
Xorin Enterprises, 323.662.2220, www.xorin8.com
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