Coachella Estate

Structural Systems · on site

A ground-up estate framed around a circular great room in the desert winter, weather-tight by late spring.

Structural Systems is building a private estate in the open farmland on the east end of the Coachella Valley. Two-story wings flank the round room, and the grounds are a project of their own: a commercial-scale pool and spa by Teserra, a five-green chip-and-putt course, and a lake still to come, plus engineered perimeter walls, a tank for fire and domestic water, gate electrical, and twenty-five palm-form light fixtures. Nine permits carry the work, all under one contractor. The round room is the hard part. Its roof frames like a wheel, rafters running from a steel hub at the peak out to the curved wall, and that work was scheduled into January and February, the coolest stretch of the desert year. The work hit that window, and the building is dried in. Everything on this page comes off the jobsite: drone flights and the crew's own cameras, shot as the work stood.

Location: Coachella, CA
Type: Ground-up custom estate
Structure: Two-story wings, radial-framed great room
Permit record: 2024 to present
Permits to date: 9 (City of Coachella)
License: CSLB #937714, Class B
Declared valuation: Approx. $11 million
Site program: Commercial pool and spa, five-green chip-and-putt course, lake, engineered walls, water tank, landscape lighting
General contractor: Structural Systems General Contracting

Circles don't forgive

The deck has to be laid out as a true curve from straight lumber, the ring of wall plates has to run fair the whole way around, and dozens of identical compound-cut rafters have to agree at the hub. A layout error at the foundation would have telegraphed through every piece above it. From the air, the deck is a clean circle on the graded pad, framing lumber staged around it.

Straight-down aerial of the great room's circular plywood deck, lumber stacked beside it on the pad and pickups parked at the edge. — Structural Systems · on site

Run like a production job

The round center went up first, wing walls followed in early February, and the whole frame stood two full stories five weeks later. Pace like that on a rural pad comes from preparation, not heroics. A haul road was graded around the site before framing started so deliveries could circulate, lumber arrived in sequenced packages dropped where they would be used, and a telehandler stayed on site, feeding framing to the upper decks. On big-crew days, trucks lined the frontage. Most of what a general contractor does on a job like this is logistics, and the logistics are the reason the schedule held.

Low aerial of the estate in framing: the two-story round center mass rising first, a telehandler working beside it, and date palms and farmland stretching beyond the pad. — Structural Systems · on site

Dried in before the heat

The radial roof was locked in before the upper walls were closed, shear panels were nailed off before the scaffold went up for the envelope, and by late May the roofing covered both wings and the cone of the round room. Finish trades now work indoors through the hottest months. Outside, block courses for the perimeter wall are already up at the property line, with the rest of the permitted site package to come.

Aerial of the rear elevation late in framing: sheathed two-story walls, green roofing across the wings and the central round room, and block courses of a perimeter wall rising at the property line. — Structural Systems · on site

From the air

Thirty seconds over the site in late January, three passes: the two-story drum of the great room with its rafters topping out, the crew at work below it, and a straight-down view of the radial roof framing around the center column.