This is a home for family of five who are modernists and art collectors, who expressed a desire for plentiful natural light and for indoor / outdoor living. The house is designed around spaces for entertaining groups of both adults and children, with dinner parties, pool parties, and soccer parties. Long term visitors will be accommodated in two guest suites.
While fully contemporary in aesthetic, the house pays homage to the New Mexico tradition of the courtyard / compound arrangement of elements. The entry sequence and public experience of the house occur in tall spaces defined by raw, earthbound concrete walls; the more private and scaled down spaces of the house flank the central public spaces.
Compositionally, the project is an interplay of solid and void, of overlapping planes and masses. The structure reaches out into the site and landscape with a series of walls and terraces, softening the interface between house and site. The landscape component of the project, currently under construction, will be in keeping with the locale, with a residential landscape that interweaves between an agricultural orchard on one side of the house and a Bosque / meadow landscape on the other.
Status: Built
Location: Los Ranchos, NM
Firm Role: Architect