Originally, when the heirs of the land made the sale of the property, the 40-acre ranch fell into the hands of developers with cookie-cutter dreams of real estate profits. Fortunately for the desert, the recession forced their hand and the property was sold to our client who protectingly wished only to build a single house thereby preserving the pristine desert. As a keen wildlife photographer, the client’s goal was to create a home that sat patiently and alert with its eye trained on the native flora and fauna.
Location: Tucson, Arizona
Year Completed: 2020
Square Footage: 4,000 sq ft
Contractor: Archerland LLC
Photographer: Logan Havens
TS Falls West Residence
This home was designed for an avid wildlife photographer relocating from New York to the Arizona desert. The project takes inspiration from the simple shapes of sheltering sheds common in the ranching vernacular and is rendered with local materials of board-formed concrete, rusting steel, and burnished plaster. Imagined as a hunting blind, the form provides prospect and refuge, while the plan acts like a sighting scope-each leg of its bent ‘H’ shape connects to the powerful peaks in the landscape. Bordered by a national park preserve, the outpost’s landscape is traversed by javelina, coyote, deer, big cats, and other creatures of this place, who often approach, noses to the glass to greet the owners. The edge between inside and outside, habitat and ruin, are deliberately blurred and celebrated.
The land and the house are deliberately brought together as one, where the desert floor and the house floor juxtapose and dissolve. It’s less of a house in a landscape and more of a scrambling of house and landscape. Each native plant was given as much consideration as the new inhabitants. The house was conceived of as if taken over by the land, the way ruins are found-intertwined with any part of their host environments.The land and the house are deliberately brought together as one, where the desert floor and the house floor juxtapose and dissolve. It’s less of a house in a landscape and more of a scrambling of house and landscape. Each native plant was given as much consideration as the new inhabitants. The house was conceived of as if taken over by the land, the way ruins are found-intertwined with any part of their host environments.
In this house, it’s not unusual to find bobcats and mountain lions lounging by the pool or javelina nose prints on the kitchen backsplash, all of which are signs of a successful effort to share the home with all that is the desert. But one would not expect to see koi swimming in the desert. And for a native desert designer, the oddity and survivability of the client’s request seemed to be a challenge. The client, an eager transplant from New York City, had grown fond of their pet koi that shared the rooftop of their city apartment and did not want to part ways. As a solution, the designer set their water habitat in a rectangular shape at the edge of a deck, beneath a cantilevered concrete floor, both of which are protected by a roof. In that strategy, the clients’ wet pets are protected from desert predators and the intense sun, while adding to the exoticness of the landscape.
Conceptually, the design team began with two simple shed buildings to contain the program and then explored their ideal site placement and orientation. As they slipped and slid those shapes around the 40 acres, they began to settle into a specific location and orientation, which was driven by sun and sight lines. However the simplicity of the two rectangles left something to be desired, they failed to dialogue with the 360 degrees of mountain ranges. The next step was to bend the two long axises into opposing boomerang shapes, each one corresponding to the site forces. The resulting plan is a bent H-shaped plan that speaks directly to what surrounds it.
In the process of honing its form and material, several inspirations coalesced. The ranching history of the property brought to mind the simple shapes of metal sheds, stone walls, and old wooden remains. This vernacular language is found scattered around the region in varying forms, each wrought by their specific functional needs, and often resulting in unintentionally beautiful proportions. The clients’ passion for wildlife photography necessitated spaces for shelter that provided both refuge and prospect. The apertures were considered and refined to deliberately focus on the forces of nature and geology. The mountain features and local peaks dictated vertical openings, which were combined with sloping roofs to maximize high views, while long panoramic windows were fitted with steel sun visors to minimize heat while viewing mountain ranges and desert groundscapes.