The Under-the-Radar Craftsman Behind a Very Iconic Masterpiece

In the beginning, when John Vugrin first began working on the project that would come to define his career, the Kellogg Doolittle House in Joshua Tree, California, the locals struggled to comprehend it. "It was more a curiosity" than a serious endeavor, as Vugrin recalls. Sited amid a mass of boulders abutting Joshua Tree National Park, the house seems teleported from some distant dimension—an armadillo perched on the hillside, perhaps, or an alien hideout.

It was Kendrick Bangs Kellogg, an admirer of Frank Lloyd Wright, who conceived of the otherworldly architecture in the late 1980s. But it was Vugrin, a designer, fabricator, furniture maker, and all-around master craftsman, who spent the ensuing two decades giving life to the swooping forms, handcrafting every last detail of the house, both inside and out: sculpted marble vanities, cantilevered steel tables, curved mahogany bookshelves, brutalist steel gates. It was a labor of intense and exacting devotion, of ensuring that each shower fixture and cabinet pull was just right. And then, in 2014, after the original owners, the artists Bev and Jay Doolittle, sold the property, Vugrin clashed with the buyers and was set adrift, his life’s work brought to a summary end. "I went through a period where I was like, man, I wasn’t really doing so hot," he recalls.

But now, under the stewardship of new owner Scott Leonard, Vugrin has returned from exile to finish a project regarded today as the masterwork of a scandalously underappreciated architect. (Never has Kellogg’s dictum "If it is not a love affair with Mother Earth, it is not Architecture" seemed so resonant.) And Leonard, a Los Angeles marketing executive who purchased the house in 2021, has offered unprecedented access to architecture students and tour groups. And those who can pony up $6,500 a night get the chance to book a stay on Airbnb. The public turn has inspired newfound appreciation for Vugrin’s career. He, like Kellogg, was never one for self-promotion.