House is a black shadow slashing the desert

In the furnace of the Mojave Desert, this house will send a shiver down your spine.

You should expect no less drama from a residence conceived by ultra-chic art director Marc Atlan (Prada, Comme des Garcons, Yves Saint Laurent, Helmut Lang). This is a man who advertises himself by quoting designer Philippe Starck -- hardly a shrinking violet -- who says of Atlan: "I have a feeling that if I ask you to design a matchbox, you'll come up with a volcano."

Atlan gave architects Oller & Pejic a simple instruction: "build a house like a shadow." The rest of the instruction -- "cast by the chiseled jaw of a supervillain just before nightfall" -- must have gone unspoken but understood.

Dubbed the Black Desert House, it glowers over California's Joshua Tree National Park, 30 minutes outside Palm Springs. The architects purposefully sought to establish a void, representing in negative a "missing mountain that was scraped away" about half a century ago when the area was dynamited for a subdivision of building pads, they said in an artistic statement on the website ArchDaily. "To try to reverse this scar would have been cost-prohibitive and ultimately impossible."

The 1,600-square-foot home on 2.5 acres recently hit the market at $975,000. Click here or on a photo for a slideshow with many more details -- including the architects' defense of black cladding in the desert.