Back in 2021, a modest midcentury home in the Twin Palms neighborhood went up for sale. Of those who arrived for 28 first-day showings — which led to five offers later that same evening — few of the potential homebuyers could have articulated their desire for crafting the winning bid quite like Greg Hoffman.
Speaking is what the former chief marketing officer of Nike does, specifically keynotes for companies and conferences around the globe as founder of Portland, Oregon–based brand consultancy Modern Arena. The art of storytelling lies at the heart of his talks on innovation, collaboration, and creative leadership, all tying into his book, Emotion by Design, published in 2022.
“I’ve had this lifelong obsession with design, and, almost as a lifestyle, it occupies a pretty strong place in my mind and the way I want to live,” he says. The home, and its emotive butterfly roofline, by architect William Krisel prompted Hoffman to move up his timeline for buying a Palm Springs retreat.
Homeowner Greg Hoffman in the entry.
Built in 1957 as part of the first subdivision by the Alexander Construction Company, the three-bedroom house grabbed a bevy of buyer attention with its classic clerestory windows, post-and-beam construction, and original fireplace. “I appreciate architects throughout history that bring a certain level of rigor, storytelling, and craftsmanship to their work,” he says.
Hoffman pursued the home with focus and purpose. Catching a fast flight from PDX to join the “circus” of other interested parties, he brought an inspector along so he could waive any further inspection as part of his offer.
“The house is a testament to the principles of great design that are still as relevant today as they were then,” Hoffman says regarding its appeal. “Architects like William Krisel, Richard Neutra, Donald Wexler, and Albert Frey had a belief system and a set of principles that drove the way they listened to clients, the way they solved problems, and the way they created a response to those desires. In doing so, they still created something that had personality, had character, and was groundbreaking and disruptive. And that sounds a lot like Nike.”
Years of spring break-ing in Palm Springs with his wife, Kirsten, and their now-adult children precluded the day his colleague called him with an insider tip: The house next door to his own desert escape would soon be fluttering onto the market.
When Hoffman learned that his offer on this rare butterfly had been accepted, he again sprung into action, this time lining up the right professionals to take on its metamorphosis and coax it closer to its Krisel-era body and soul. Those experts were, as it turns out, well within reach.
Residential designer Steve Poehlein, principal of SP Design Studio, and building contractor Chris W. Foster had their heads down, deep in the weeds, at his friends’ adjacent home on the same cul-de-sac, restoring the late 1950s architecture to its former glory. “The idea sparked that we could simply have them move right over to ours once theirs was complete,” Hoffman says.
Residential designer Steve Poehlein redesigned the home and its exterior, adding a spa where pool equipment had stood.
Poehlein and Foster have forged a symbiotic relationship over the past seven years, completing 25 projects — of the estimated 150 Poehlein has taken on — in a variety of styles.
“Often with midcentury homes, people get ahold of them, they live there, and they start doing little additions, then changing them and really modifying them,” says Poehlein, who recently applied his architecture background and partiality toward “warm modern design” in working with Christopher Kennedy on the Canopy Wine Lounge downtown. “The bones of this house overall were in pretty good shape. The original tongue-and-groove wood ceiling with the beams was in great shape, thankfully.”
Hoffman says figuring out how to bring the rest of the home “back to what it was” while modernizing aspects like the kitchen and the bathrooms required equal parts imagination and resourcefulness from the entire team. “The point isn’t to live with the ghosts of the past, right? Respect the past but define the future,” he says. “It’s hard, but I believe design is an exercise of restraint and subtraction. You’re eliminating things to reveal what matters most, and we needed partners to realize our vision.”
Preserving the 1957 fireplace proved a solid first step toward upholding Krisel’s vintage design. “Compositionally, I think it’s fantastic,” Hoffman says. The previous owners’ same instinct to leave it untouched was the shiny needle in a dull, somewhat dysfunctional haystack.
“Karma Tree 7” from Super Simple hangs above a Knoll Barcelona Chair.
Atop the Line Console by Design Within Reach are a lamp and sculpture from Super Simple.
Two non-competing focal points share the spotlight in the living room: the original fireplace and a wall unit from Look Modern.
In addition to a flooring upgrade of terrazzo-look porcelain tile, improvements to the partially closed-in kitchen, matchbox bathrooms, hackneyed closets, and massive but disorderly grounds had Poehlein sketching for ways to optimize the most challenged spaces while accentuating midcentury principles.
“There were actually a couple modifications to the house that were well done,” he notes. The breezeway, enclosed with a glass front to form the entryway, adjoins a carport-turned-garage. Off the primary bedroom, a bump-out addition tacked on more square footage to one bathroom. For the other, Poehlein borrowed space from an atrium and blended in a subtle expansion.
In the kitchen, Poehlein removed a superfluous wall that cut it off from the rest of the house, opening it up as intended. Kirsten brought her ideas for space planning, which smartly moved the sink into the attached island. The kitchen now engaged the living and dining areas with this one move and allowed Poehlein to extend a window that had hovered above the sink all the way to the floor.
The narrow bathrooms, despite their slight expansions, compelled Poehlein and Foster to strip everything out before re-imagining them to feel more spacious. Rebuilding the closets to their original specs restored a midcentury aesthetic while providing enough storage for a desert getaway.
A contact from their home base of Portland, Hether Dunn of Hether Dunn Design, partnered with the couple on two homes before this one. “It felt natural to have those same conversations with this house and creatively collaborate,” Hoffman says. “We have similar standards, maybe different tastes, but that’s the best part. I’m more minimal and clean lines, whereas Hether is, ‘Let’s use some more color,’ and Kirsten is, ‘Let’s use layering and texture.’ So the intersection of those points of view is where the magic happens.” Dunn’s touch comes through in the new kitchen, the wallpaper and tile choices, bedding, pillows, and rugs for every room.
When the pair are in town, they like to visit Palm Springs’ stores Super Simple and Market Market. Both supplied inspiration and inventory for the redo, as did 1st Dibs, Hoffman’s favorite place to scroll for artwork.
On the far side of the kitchen window that Poehlein extended to the floor, new upper cabinets all but disappear into a textured white backsplash.
In the primary bedroom, an upholstered platform bed with built-in nightstands speaks to the midcentury home’s roots but in a modern vernacular. The glass expanses — quintessential Krisel — incorporate sliders that open to a private patio and the mature citrus orchard.
Tile is by Kelly Wearstler for Ann Sacks.
An Oval Saarinen Dining Table maximizes space in the dining area.
One of the home’s most emblematic features is Krisel’s siting of the structure on the lot. By precisely angling the home, he aligned its roofline with the slope of the distant mountains, creating a moment of backyard awe and visual harmony. The admiration this detail receives more than compensates for the team’s efforts in organizing the long, pie-shaped lot.
“Because the house is on an angle, nothing is straight or at a right angle to anything else.” Poehlein says. “Integrating the house into the hardscape and the landscape and coordinating it into the pool was tricky.” His solution took advantage of the problem, employing diagonal lines and abstract shapes to define new spaces. Each relates back to the architecture, from a pergola-covered dining area adjoining an outdoor bar to lounge areas around the pool and a firepit positioned for the views.
The new design incorporated a small orchard of citrus trees and relocated the pool equipment, previously plunked down poolside, to drop in a spa.
“Ultimately, the rest was about stripping off all the old and getting rid of all the bad,” Poehlein says. Coming in at a tidy 1,800 square feet, just as purchased, the home’s rebooted midcentury modern personality is twice as large. One can only imagine the volume of first-day showings and rapid-fire offers it might generate now. Alas, the winning bidder is keeping his prize.
“I think part of the genius of Twin Palms is that all space is functional and useful,” says Hoffman, noting that while the 78-home neighborhood originally offered a collection of alternating façades and rooflines to choose from, the standard floor plan supported gracious living in a rather compact space. The renovation shores up that aim. “When we have guests over, everyone says, ‘Wow, it’s amazing how you wouldn’t need anything else, that such a small footprint can go so far.’ ” Yes, once vision meets mastery, it can.
