Inside a Designer's Remote Tranquil Minimalist Desert House in Joshua Tree

I never was actually a desert person and so choosing to buy a house in a desert was sort of a risk. It's funny because I never really designed a house before. I never even like thought about it but my best friend bought a house down the street and was working on her house and I was like why not like why not like see what happens. My name is Mila Morris and I'm an architectural designer. I designed this house. I call it Le Cheshwell. I found this house and it it was like a little more isolated than most homes because it was surrounded by public property so nobody can build there and it had this gorgeous view of this big wash. We were just eating pizza and drinking wine one night trying to like think of names because we're like I guess we'll name the house like why not. I picked up the Battle of Tabasco and I was like shaking it and I was like reading the label it's like Shakewell and I was like Shakewell and I was like oh we should call it like Shakewell like Cheshwell and then Jordan was like yeah but Le Cheshwell or something you know and we were just like it was a kind of a joke but it like I don't think it actually means anything. The desert's so windy and we get like lots of animals and bugs and so I was like well if I build a pool that's partially above ground partially below subgrade it would probably stop a lot of the animals from like dying and falling in the pool. At the same time it would be like a nice little like seat and visual kind of thing so that was really fun to design that was just a sketch and you know it took me like a week to get it all like kind of perfect and then yeah the location of it I was gonna put it closer to the ledge and then like literally the day of while we were like starting to dig Jonah comes out she's like no no no no no actually I didn't know you were gonna put it right there like put it right there and I was like okay we have to like re-dig it and like over here so we changed the location of the pool but it was always like that was it was you know everything was sort of like in the moment. As I was like finishing the house actually I met Jonah. Jonah's a furniture builder and I don't like shopping so not liking to shop for like furniture and things like that kind of forced me to make everything. I also like a lot of found objects like stuff that's like other worlds maybe like more on the ancient side because I think I have like more of like a lot of like clean lines and more like modernist feel but like natural materials. This house is kind of amazing at capturing shadows and light and in a way that I did not expect. The circle window room is really special because the sun rises on that side and as the sun's like coming up it's like changing these beautiful shapes and colors in that little room and then if you're just laying in bed at nighttime you can see the stars and sometimes we get these big moons that look just massive and like bright orange and you can see right through the the little circle window so pretty.