Beginning on Sept. 22, the craftsmanship of architecture students will be featured in a sprawling exhibition exploring the works of Swiss-born architect Albert Frey and Italian-Brazilian architect Lina Bo Bardi at the Palm Springs Art Museum’s Architecture and Design Center.

Twenty students from Professor Lauren Bricker and Professor Luis Hoyos’ ARC 499 Special Topic: California Architecture class spent the spring quarter working with the museum’s curators to build five physical models and drafting five digital models of the modernist homes designed by Frey and Bo Bardi. The exhibition is Palm Spring Art Museum’s contribution to the Getty initiative Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA, Latin American & Latino Art in LA.

Though Frey and Bo Bardi’s paths never crossed during their careers, their aesthetics and approach to urban design found common ground in their embrace of Southern California’s social and environmental idiosyncrasies, the ways in which communities shaped their denizens and how climate shaped the terrain.

The project divided students into five teams that were each assigned a Frey or Bo Bardi house to research. The class included lectures with the museum curators and visited the iconic Frey II House in Palm Springs, the 800-square-foot home built into the side of a mountain (literally: a boulder protrudes into its living room/bedroom area).

“The process has to do with establishing common language of the material and the interpretation of the houses,” Bricker said. “A lot of the issues had to do with physical context, climate, and [Frey and Bo Bardi]’s design philosophies. The scale is small enough that they can conceptualize a whole project and have an opportunity to introduce design elements.”

Exhibition Dates: Sept. 22-Jan. 7, 2018

Location: Palm Springs Art Museum Architecture and Design Center, 300 S. Palm Canyon Drive, Palm Springs, CA. 92262. www.psmuseum.org

Hours: Thursday, 12-8 p.m.; Friday-Tuesday, 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Closed on Wednesdays.

Admission: Free