This commission, for a professional couple, centers on a simple, farmhouse design with an “H” shaped floor plan. The husband is the process of retiring and requested a wood working shop space to be located off the entry of this 3,200 square foot residence. Working within the vernacular New Mexico agricultural and rural residential buildings, the form of the building is apparent, but the project detailing borrows freely from a more contemporary material palette. Yard walls of cast-in-place concrete, and steel trellis work, are designed to complement, yet differentiate themselves from the traditional building forms.
The interior spaces have vaulted ceilings that are combined with interior soffits along the window walls. The soffits provide space for mechanical ductwork and lighting, while reducing the overall height of the ceiling, since the clients did not want to feel “like they are in a religious space”. The open floor plan between the dining, kitchen, and living rooms, flow together around a center fireplace. The bedrooms and related guest bedroom spaces occupy the end of each wing.
Personally speaking, I retain a healthy interest in architectural expression that forms a backdrop to its surroundings. This project asks the question of how local vernacular can be re-learned to achieve a balance between an architectural expression and its surroundings and remain a work of its time. With this project, the structure is indeed a quiet neighbor, while providing its occupants with the advantages of contemporary conveniences. Part of the Santa Fe Style has at its core ethos, an unwritten agreement to sublimate a contemporary design expression, respect the antecedents of the area, engage with natural surroundings and climate, while advancing interior space with its contemporary conveniences. In some cases, the uneventful building, seemingly “unauthored” by an anonymous architect, recedes into the landscape and quietly supports a visual narrative of a structure untethered to time, and therefore, takes a meaningful place within a larger, historical context.
