Category: Arizona

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Matthews Residence: Exploring Modern Adobe Architecture in the Desert

Will Bruder is an American architect known for his innovative use of materials and site-specific designs. Born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in 1946, Bruder’s background spans art, sculpture, and architecture. He studied at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, earning a degree in Fine Arts, and later apprenticed under visionary architect Paolo Soleri, which significantly influenced his work in the desert Southwest.

Bruder’s work focuses on creating architecture that integrates with the natural environment, using innovative material choices and architectural forms. His approach prioritizes materials that connect the building to its surroundings, as seen in his use of adobe for the Matthews Residence.

The Matthews Residence, designed by Will Bruder, was built between 1979 and 1980 and received the 1983 Environmental Excellence Award for its innovative design. The residence is a 2,800-square-foot adobe home. The primary material of this residence is adobe brick, a traditional earth material made from sun-dried bricks, which is able to blend into the natural landscape. Adobe also offers excellent thermal properties, helping regulate temperature in the desert climate.

Inspired by the traditional Southwestern courtyard house, the design features curving adobe walls, strategically shaped to reduce exposure to the intense Arizona sun. The house spans a large double cul-de-sac lot in a suburban area of west Phoenix.

The layout creates a dynamic interplay between expansive and more intimate spaces, enhanced by the flowing geometry of its curves. The design’s sense of light, compression, and openness is carefully crafted, with a long skylight running from the entrance, introducing a play of light that highlights the contrast between rougher materials like adobe and concrete floors and the more refined details of oak and galvanized steel.

A key inspiring aspect is how Bruder masterfully combines adobe with modern materials like steel and wood, which creates a dynamic contrast between natural, traditional, and modern industrial materials. This combination enriches the architectural narrative by blending the old with the new. The combination of modern architectural design with natural, sustainable materials makes the Matthews Residence a source of inspiration for architects interested in sustainability and regionalism.

Interestingly, this is the only known Bruder house constructed from adobe, making it a rare and distinctive project. The way adobe is used in this design adds to its uniqueness, and it remains one of the most intriguing examples of Bruder’s residential work.

Matthews ResidenceCitations:

AZ Architecture. “Matthews Residence – Will Bruder Architect – Adobe.” AZ Architecture, https://azarchitecture.com/architecture-guide/matthews-residence-will-bruder-architect-adobe/. Accessed 23 September 2024.

USModernist. “Will Bruder.” USModernist, https://usmodernist.org/bruder.htm. Accessed 23 September 2024.

Rael, Ronald. Earth Architecture. Princeton Architectural Press, 2009, pp. 120-121.

 

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Taos Pueblo

 

Pueblo de Taos
© Edmondo Gnerre
https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/492/gallery/

Taos Pueblo is an ancient, occupied multi-generational community in Northern New Mexico. “Pueblo” refers to both the physical buildings and community (stylized “pueblo”) and the native people of those communities (stylized “Pueblo”). The people are also known as Puebloans, or Pueblo peoples, and are native to the Southwestern United States (New Mexico, Arizona, Texas). They share a common culture, including food and agriculture, history, traditions, and religious practices. Aside from Taos, inhabited pueblos include San Ildefonso, Acoma, Zuni, and Hopi.

Taos Pueblo
© OUR PLACE The World Heritage Collection
Author: David Muench
https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/492/gallery/

The most recognizable feature of the Taos Pueblo community are the multi-story, red clay and adobe homes and community buildings. They span both sides of the Sacred Blue Lake/Rio Pueblo de Taos (a tributary of the Rio Grande) which is also the population’s only source of water. The community has been continuously occupied for over 1000 years, likely originally built between 1000 and 1450 C.E. It is both the longest continuously inhabited community in the United States, and the largest of the pueblos.

Taos Pueblo
© OUR PLACE The World Heritage Collection
Author: David Muench
https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/492/gallery/

The structures are built in terraced tiers, extending out as they descend toward the ground, and a height of five stories at maximum. “The property includes the walled village with two multi-storey adobe structures, seven kivas (underground ceremonial chambers), the ruins of a previous pueblo, four middens, a track for traditional foot-races, the ruins of the first church built in the 1600s and the present-day San Geronimo Catholic Church” UNESCO. The community sits at the base of the Taos mountains, the Sangre de Cristo range of the Rocky Mountains

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https://taospueblo.com/history/

Spanish explorers arrived in 1540 C.E. and originally believed the community to be one of the Seven Golden Cities of Cibola, a legend of Aztec mythology pursued by Coronado, among others. The miccaceous mineral (micca) found in the clay that is used to re-mud the homes every year shimmers in the light, seemingly like gold.

It is an occupied, inhabited, living community, with dwellings passed on within the family from eldest son to eldest son throughout generations. Taos Pueblo is recognized as both a U.S. National Historic Landmark and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Visitors are welcome, but as an occupied space, access is limited to businesses and tourist centers, and photography of certain parts of the physical community and people is limited. The tribal land encompasses 95,000 acres with about 4,500 inhabitants. Approximately 150 people lived in the historic pueblo adobe dwellings as of 2010.

old-taos-images-historic-museum-of-taos-008
https://taospueblo.com/history/
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https://taospueblo.com/history/
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https://taospueblo.com/history/
Google Earth 3D aerial of Taos Pueblo buildings
Google Earth aerial of Taos Pueblo land

REFERENCES

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JONES STUDIO HOUSES: Sensual Modernism

Jones Studio Homes: Sensual Modernism is a self-imposed limited look at the 40-year-plus career of Eddie Jones. Almost unheard of outside the southwest United States, Jones has quietly accumulated a body of work ranging beyond residential design to include major federal projects impacting the edges of America… to be featured in a soon to be published monograph!

Supported by Aaron Betsky’s insightful forward, plus an enlightening interview with Vladimir Belogolovsky, and comments from many of his famous colleagues, Jones summarizes his lifelong dance with architecture through the personal stories embedded in each house. Refusing to repeat himself, the work tests the reality of gravity on a diverse spectrum of interpretive vernacular responses to climate, landscape and function. Although designed by the same hand, the forms vary as much as the choice of materials. Rammed earth, concrete, wood and metal are explored together and separately yet remain subordinate to Jones’ fascination with glass.

Utilizing photographs, hand-drawings and first-person accounts, the motivations and joy of being an architect are expressed by an exceptional whole informed by many ordinary parts.

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Lacey Residence

The Lacey Residence, by Jones Studio, is a 4,000 sq ft private residence located in Paradise Valley, AZ.

The site slopes in three directions; it is a desert knoll. Linear forms, assuming they are long enough, will inherently emphasize the shape of the landscape by contrasting a level parapet with the sloping topography.

Fortunately the program included a lap pool. This linear permission slip completed the third topographic axis, and finds directional purpose in its alignment with the 6 million year old Papago Peak three miles away; and the centerline of the main entry door!

According to the architects, there is a beautiful honesty in relinquishing architecture to the uncompromising reality of nature. If the intentions are sincere the architecture will only get better.

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Windcatcher House

The Begay home is Design Build Bluff’s first project since opening the door to more universities. The students of architecture of the University of Colorado Denver designed a home that responds to a sustainable ethos by using local clay and soils for rammed earth walls and compressed brick for a wind catching chimney which cools the temperature inside during the high summer temperatures. The Windcatcher House, which is totally off-grid and harvests all its water, features an innovative wind tower designed to capture the wind to cool the house.

The Windcatcher House includes local clay for its hand-built compressed brick, as well as the south- and east-facing wall facades. Thermal mass cools the home during the hot, dry summers, and soaks up heat during the very frigid winters. Rainwater is collected from the adjacent carport’s roof and gets reused for the garden.

As with all Navajo Nation homes, this house is nowhere near a power grid, which makes relying on the surrounding earth even more useful and important. The Begays don’t have a car, so they plan to use the carport for an animal barn.

more [ inhabit | university of colorado | green investing ]

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Brittlebush

Brittlebush is an experimental Desert Dwelling designed by Simón de Agüero, a recent graduate of the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture in Taliesin, Arizona. The open-air living space incorporates tensile fabric structures into its design to shelter occupants from the sun. A fireplace provides winter heating.

The majority of the material used for Brittlebush were recovered or found on site: 90% of the steel was salvaged from the school scrap yard, all of the wood used for the formwork was waste from a local renovation project, and the earth used for the walls was from on-site.

Read more at [ designboom | boiteaoutils | treehugger ]

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Weddle Gilmore Rammed Earth

Weddle Gilmore Black Rock Studio has developed a specialty in trailheads over its 10 years in business. The architecture firm has designed this building type for several municipalities near its Scottsdale, Arizona, base, and it has realized three for Scottsdale’s McDowell Sonoran Preserve alone.


The Gateway to the McDowell Sonoran Preserve, Scottsdale, Arizona

The Gateway was designed to celebrate the entry and passage into the 36,400 acre McDowell Sonoran Preserve while minimizing the impact on the native desert. The Gateway is the point of access to over 45 miles of trails within the McDowell Sonoran Preserve for hiking, bicycling, and equestrian enjoyment. The project site design achieved the complete preservation of the existing network of arroyos and minimized earthwork alterations of the natural habitat. The building walls are made of rammed earth, recalling a tradition of indigenous desert building while meeting all of the performance requirements of modern use. The roof is covered in native desert cobble so that it blends into the desert when observed from the mountain trails to the east. The Gateway incorporates numerous strategies for resource conservation. An 18 KW solar system generates as much solar electricity as the Gateway consumes to realize a ‘net zero’ of energy consumption. Up to 60,000 gallons of rainwater is harvested through roof collection and storage in an underground cistern–providing 100% of the water needed for landscape irrigation.


Lost Dog Wash Trailhead, Scottsdale, Arizona

On the perimeter of the McDowell Sonoran Preserve, the Lost Dog Wash Trailhead is an example of commitment to environment through its preservation of native habitat, choice of sustainable building materials, and natural resource conservation. The structures are nested into the landscape and incorporate materials that blend with the natural desert environment. The rammed earth walls of the structures utilize earth material that was excavated during foundation construction. The trailhead restrooms incorporate a composting system which minimizes water consumption and saves approximately 200,000 gallons of water annually over a conventional system.

Gray water and rainwater harvesting provides 75,000 gallons of water a year for landscape irrigation. Solar power is provided to the trailhead facilities by a roof integrated 3,000 watt solar electric array that allows the trailhead to be completely self-sufficient and independent of the electric grid.