From the road, Steven Harris’s Rancho Mirage home mirrors his five-decade architectural career—flat-roofed, glass-walled, elegant, and set against the San Jacinto Mountains. But its real marvel lies beneath: an underground garage housing his superb Porsche collection. Harris built the home specifically for his cars. His previous house lacked space, so this new residence was designed around a vast subterranean garage holding about 20 sports cars, from several 356 Carrera to the latest 911 S/T (992).
His Porsche passion began early. “Then, when I went to university, somehow I convinced [my father]…he should really let me take it to school. And he did,” Harris recalls. “That’s the source of the obsession with Porsche.”
After studying philosophy and fine art, Harris turned to architecture and began teaching just two years post-graduation, spending most of his 48-year career at Yale. Busy with his private practice, he didn’t begin collecting Porsches seriously for decades. “I bought one and then another one – and then another one,” he says. Soon, he focused on rare Carrera variants and RS models, guided by a meticulous eye.
Today, his collection exceeds 50 lightweight, competition-bred 356 and 911s, including a 1973 911 Carrera RS 2.7, 911 Carrera RS (964), Paint-to-Sample Chartreuse 911 GT3 RS 4.0, a Light Green 911 Carrera RS 3.0 (one of 52 built), and two GT2 RS generations. All share a purpose-built purity that echoes Harris’s design ethos. “I am very suspicious of architectural fashion…Porsche evolves slowly and precisely over time. It doesn’t have extraneous details.” His architecture follows the same principles: “I aspire in my work to make something look effortless and inevitable.”
The underground garage prioritizes function. Cars are angled in two rows for easy access—“It’s a garage, not a museum.” Local codes limit ground-level parking, so Harris installed an elevator to lower cars below. “I go driving almost every morning, before sunrise…Choosing the right vehicle is a question of balance – and mood.”
He drives often, even to project sites across California. “I don’t want to die with a bunch of cars with 27 miles on them.” His 356 has also conquered the Peking to Paris and a 16,000-kilometer South American rally.
Favorites? “I love the Carrera RS 2.7 because it’s so perfectly balanced,” he says. “The 911 Carrera RS (964)…that’s what God meant when he said analog.” Yet he views himself not as an owner but “the caretaker of the cars…to preserve them for somebody else eventually.”
“It’s not a house with a basement,” Harris smiles. “It’s the other way around. The garage came first.”
This story first published in © Porsche magazine Christophorus 416. Text © Matt Master. Photos © Scott Frances and James Lipman.
