Welcome Beyond Is Bringing Surrealist Living to the California Desert

Lying in the shadow of California’s mighty San Gorgonio Mountain, on the western edge of the Mojave Desert, is Morongo Valley. Although it’s only a couple of hours east of Los Angeles by car, it may as well be another universe: the terrain is dusty and sun-baked, scattered with snakes and shrubs, and you can easily walk for hours without encountering another person. It was here, surrounded by five acres of untouched land, that gallerist and furniture dealer Denise Portmans decided to create a new kind of desert hideaway.

Inspired by Luis Barragán and Georgia O’Keeffe’s New Mexico home, the Merchant High House is an artful homage to its surrounding landscape. The house is filled with wood, stone, handwoven baskets, fluid sculptures and organic, misshapen textures, while the rooms themselves feel as if they’ve been carved deep into the hills of the desert, enveloped in sandy tones and warm, womb-like pinks. “I wanted a house that overlooked a landscape which I could incorporate into the home and draw inspiration from,” Portmans explains. She bought it in 2019 with her daughter, the artist Sara Marlowe Hall, and they have been working on the interiors ever since (the pair also own the LA shop Merchant, which serves as a kind of extension of the property). “We knew we wanted the house to feel lived in and comfortable, for people to be transported to another place.”

Portmans’ home is open to guests on the holiday lettings agency, Welcome Beyond. The site is a much-welcomed alternative to Airbnb, which is now a global goliath home to millions of rentals, many of which have little to no aesthetic variation (a few succulents, a faux Eames lounger, and some quirky slogan wall hangings). This minimalist, easy-to-reproduce style, coined as ‘Airspace’ by The New Yorker writer Kyle Chayka, focuses on familiarity above all else – the idea that, wherever you go in the world, you will always feel like you’ve been there before. But Welcome Beyond promises almost the exact opposite experience. “From the very beginning our philosophy was to be the most selective agency out there,” says Chris Laugsch, who founded the company with his brother Oliver. “There’s no hard criteria, just a very subjective selection of small places that are distinctive in terms of their architecture, design and general atmosphere.”

Each property is handpicked for its “authenticity”, with a heavy focus on quality over quantity. Potential owners are then interviewed at length about their rental to try and draw out its unique personality. “When most of the owners set out, their intention wasn’t to create a vacation rental, run it as a business and make money,” Laugsch explains. “They were driven by passion about the place, the history, the view, the area, the architecture. Something set off the spark and set everything in motion.” Because of this, most of the properties on their books took several years to complete. 

Another example of this, along with High Merchant House, is The Meltdown: a surrealist bungalow steps from Joshua Tree National Park. There, in the depths of the desert, things start to feel more hallucinatory. “The landscape is already so alive and full of mystery, I felt like I could really create a world within a world,” says Meltdown owner Shawn Button. Futurist decor, vivid colour and bizarre, Dali-esque details are meant to “accentuate the experience of dreaming” (as does the hot tub, where you can sit and scour the stars for UFOs). During the day, the windows offer breathtaking, panoramic views of the desert, and of Kendrick Bangs Kellogg’s iconic Doolittle House, which hovers on a hill nearby. “I find that the more we are able to tap into our subconscious mind, the more we are able to experience ourselves and be present with the world around us,” Button adds. “In a state of hyperawareness, life becomes more beautiful.”

Despite being around since 2009, Welcome Beyond is expanding slowly (including a new range of homes in Colombia). But in a world that demands rapid growth, they’ve always tried to stick to their principles. “Our goal was never to grow fast and make the most money,” says Laugsch. “Making money is necessary, but we always wanted to stay true to our philosophy of a very selective collection.” The goal is not convenience, but to target travellers who “regard shelter as a meaningful part” of their holiday. “Very often they chose a destination because of the place,” Laugsch adds. “That’s when we know that we have done something right.”

Visit Welcome Beyond’s boutique hotels and holiday homes here.