John Lautner, The Desert Hot Springs Motel

"Ten days after I stopped writing pornographic stories, I met William Burroughs," is how the voice over in Sasha Pirker's short film begins an autobiographical story. The picture shows a few views of wind turbines in the barren area around the spa of Desert Hot Springs, which is located about 150 kilometers east of Los Angeles. Like the person who belongs to the voice, the building at which the camera stops is revealed gradually. It's the Desert Hot Springs Motel (built in 1947), which was designed by the architect John Lautner (1911-1994), whose UFO-like Malin Residence (1960; also called the Chemosphere) is one of the icons of postwar American architecture.