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Walter S. White (1917–2002) was an American modernist architect, industrial designer, and inventor who worked in Coachella Valley, CA region in the 1950s and the  Colorado Springs, CO area in the 1960s. White is considered notable for his influence in early Palm Desert, CA and his innovative roofing and window systems.

Ancestry
Walter Stares White Jr. was born in San Bernardino, California, United States, in 1917. His father of the same name was born in Canada to a Canadian mother and English father, having come to the United States in 1897. He and his wife Caroline had their first child, Beulah A. White, while living in Kentucky in 1913. Walter White Sr.'s occupation is listed as carpentry by the 1920 US Census and as general construction by 1930.

Childhood and education
White attended San Bernardino High School between 1933 and 1936. At that time, he had already shown interest in Architecture, receiving in 1936 the First Premium Award in the California State Fair for architectural lettering for an exhibit he had begun working on while still in high school.

In the fall of 1936, White enrolled at San Bernardino Valley Junior College, staying for only one semester. School records indicate that he received failing grades in all but two of his classes that semester. White abandoned formal education and choose a path of apprenticeship instead.

Early career
White worked with several architectural and engineering firms in the first decade of his career, including some of California's best known early modern architects.

Harwell Hamilton Harris
White worked for six months in 1937 for Harwell Hamilton Harris, during the period that the firm was working on John Entenza house in Santa Monica, California. The house's curved driveway intersected with a Porte-cochère significantly influenced some of White's later work.

Rudolf Schindler
In late August of 1937, White began his eight month tenure in Rudolf Schindler's Los Angeles office. According to time sheets kept by Schindler, White worked primarily on houses, beach houses, and domestic and commercial remodels. The time sheets indicate that White at one point worked on the Guy Wilson house during his time with Schindler. In 1938 Schindler changed the initial projected roof design to a reverse gable, forming a butterfly shape. This form is later seen in White's design of pre-fab mountain cabins for Sears & Roebuck. However, most of White's hours were dedicated to a collaborative project with Herman Sachs designing an interior for a Lockheed 27 airplane. This the first documented project linking White to airplanes, who became an avid aviator and designed many aviation related structures.

Engineering firms
Between 1939 and 1942, White worked for Win E. Wilson for two years and six months, helping to plan and design prefabricated war housing with a skin-stressed plywood panel system. In his papers, White recounts that over 8,000 of these units were constructed in the United States.

Legacy
For the remainder of the war, White was employed by the Douglass Aircraft Co. in El Segundo, California, working on machine tool design for four years and six months, 1942 to 1946. In 1947 White moved from Los Angeles to Palm Springs where he worked for Clark & Frey Architects between 1947 and 1948, one year and six months. Starting in 1948, White began to work on his own as a self-employed designer and contractor in Colorado Springs, Colorado where he continued to practice as a contractor until 1965. White obtained his architecture license in Colorado Springs in 1967. He returned to California and worked there during the 1970s and 1980s. Reflecting on his career, White described the variety of buildings he designed: “300 residences, 40 recreation homes, ski lodges, commercial buildings, churches, luxurious club houses and guest rooms, and condominiums. Of the 300 residences designed I have built approximately 15% of them myself.”

In addition to designing houses, White devoted much of his career to the research and development of the Solar Heat Exchanger Window Wall and the "Hyperboloic Paraboloid Roof Structure and Method of Constructing Thereof" –- both of which he patented, in 1975 and 1996 respectively.

Walter S. White died in 2002, at the age of 85. After White’s death in 2002 his papers were donated to the Architecture and Design Collection of the University of California at Santa Barbara (UCSB). In the fall of 2015, UCSB’s Art, Design, and Architecture Museum presented the first ever retrospective of Walter S. White’s architecture; an exhibition which was researched in large parts by students of the Department of the History of Art and Architecture.