A First Look at Modernism Week: October 2026

Four days of architecture, preservation, and a little desert inspiration before the main event returns in February.

Courtesy Frey House II, Palm Springs Art Museum, Images by Lance Gerber

There’s something about fall in Palm Springs. The heat begins to break, the light changes, and suddenly the desert starts calling again.

This October, Modernism Week – October returns October 15–18, offering four days of home tours, architecture, design, and experiences across the Coachella Valley. Think of it as the fall preview to February’s Modernism Week—and a very good excuse to spend a long weekend looking behind the walls and hedges of some extraordinary desert homes. (Modernism Week⁠)

At Canary House, we’re especially interested this year.

As work continues on the Laswell Residence ahead of its own Modernism Week moment in February 2027, October offers a chance to get out of the construction dust, see what others are doing, and reconnect with the architecture and lifestyle that inspired this project in the first place.

On Our List

One of the featured homes this October is The Marquee at Twin Palms, a 1950s post-and-beam residence reimagined by H3K Home + Design. It’s exactly the kind of project we love seeing: an original midcentury home thoughtfully brought forward for the way people live today. (Modernism Week⁠)

We also have our eye on Palm Springs Paradise Home Tour II, a driving tour through six Desert Modern vacation homes and full-time residences. The common threads—bold design, color and indoor-outdoor living—feel particularly relevant to what we’ve been exploring at Canary House. (Modernism Week⁠)

And then there are the classics.

Frey House II, Albert Frey’s remarkably personal mountainside residence, will be open for self-guided tours throughout the weekend. Sunnylands, A. Quincy Jones’ 1966 desert landmark, is also offering tours, while Hotel Lautner gives visitors the opportunity to experience John Lautner’s 1947 residential fourplex in Desert Hot Springs. (Modernism Week⁠)

The lineup stretches beyond individual houses, too—from the 1955 CoCo Cabana garden apartments and Charles Du Bois’ Desert Lanai 4 to tours of Blue Skies Village and several significant private residences. It’s a reminder that Palm Springs modernism was never one single architectural idea. It was an experiment in how architecture, landscape, climate and leisure could work together. (Modernism Week⁠)

And that may be the part we love most.

Looking Back to Look Forward

Restoring Laswell has made us increasingly aware that preservation isn’t about freezing a house in time.

It’s about understanding what made it special in the first place—and then making thoughtful decisions about what comes next.

Every house tour becomes a little bit of research: the transition between indoors and out, the way a roofline frames the mountains, an original material someone had the good sense not to remove, or a new intervention that feels completely at home within a 70-year-old structure.

Sometimes the smallest detail follows you home.

That’s why October feels particularly well timed for us. By then, Laswell will have moved beyond much of the heavy construction and into the details that will ultimately define the house: finishes, furnishings, art, landscape and all those decisions that turn architecture into a place people actually want to inhabit.

We’ll be looking.

We’ll probably be taking too many pictures.

And undoubtedly, we’ll come home with a few ideas.

And Then, February

There’s another reason this Modernism Week will feel different.

This time, we won’t simply be attending as admirers of Palm Springs modernism. We’ll be counting down to February 2027, when the Laswell Residence opens its doors during Modernism Week.

For nearly eighty years, this house has been part of the architectural story of Palm Springs. Our goal has never been to reinvent that story, but to uncover it, preserve what matters, and give the house a thoughtful next chapter.

October is our chance to explore.

February, we get to welcome you inside.

Modernism Week – October runs October 15–18, 2026. Tickets are on sale now. (Modernism Week⁠)

Explore Modernism Week October 2026 Home Tours⁠

At Canary House, we explore the people, places, objects and ideas that make vacation living an art.