At the dawn of his international fame, architect Richard Neutra was approached by a St. Louis socialite, Grace Lewis Miller, to design a small winter home on the edge of glamour-baked Palm Springs. Miller wanted an open, light-filled house that could also act as a studio for her fashionably avant-garde exercise course in posture and grace, "The Mensendieck System." This unique program, combined with the desert landscape and the proactive, health-minded client appealed to the idealist in Neutra. The frequent, fervent dialog between Neutra and Miller, who had great mutual respect, produced a work of forward-thinking and artful architecture.