Julia Walker came to Memphis College of Art and gave a lecture on environmental-friendly and modernist architecture, primarily located in the American Southwest. She began the speech describing the International Exhibition of Modern Architecture that took place in the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1932. She described how this really emphasized modern architecture’s design, but this was its shining point up until the destruction of the Pruitt-Igoe housing among other circumstances.
She described how the southwest brought an opportunity to bring back the simpler designs and mix with the environment due to the area’s constant battle with sun, sand, and heat. Many modern structures there were a part of the land in their construction and design. She described an example such as Frank Lloyd Wright’s Ocatitto Camp, which were cabins that used an agreeable diffusion of light. She also described Al Beadle’s White Gates House which created an oasis in the desert, as well as she described Chafee’s Ramada House which resembled old Pueblo structures.
She described Rick Joy’s Desert Nomad House as well as his Tuscan Mountain House. They both were very simple and conceptual, and they brought about what Julia Walker described of important elements of good design; some being it needs to be innovative, unobtrusive, honest, durable, among others. She mentioned these weren’t all required, but they did apply to several modernist architectural designs. The quote she left with approached a new idea towards the idea of the modern among the desert land; “It is no desert.”
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