Architecture and Design Center to open in Palm Springs in November

The Palm Springs Art Museum announced today that its architecture and design center, which will be housed in a 1960s bank building, will open in November.

The Architecture and Design Center, Edwards Harris Pavilion will house exhibits, programs, research space and storage for the museum’s architecture and design collections and archives. The unveiling is slated for Nov. 9, according to museum spokesman Bob Bogard.

The opening exhibition, “An Eloquent Modernist, E. Stewart Williams, Architect,” will honor the architect who designed the building — then Santa Fe Federal Savings & Loan — in 1961. The 13,000-square-foot, glass-and-steel building is a Class I Historic Site and has floor-to-ceiling windows, gallery space and a store in the bank vault, which still has its original door, according to Bogard.

According to the museum’s website, the building will be the country’s first historic structure to be turned into a freestanding architecture and design museum housed in a modern building.

More information on the center may be found online at www.psmuseum.org.