On summer mornings, Julie Donnelly watches the quail march across her backyard deck. The chicks pause briefly to sip from an unusual pond before disappearing in the bamboo fence line. The 12x12-foot cooling pond, square and glistening with smooth black obsidian rock plucked from the beaches of Mexico, is but one of the passive cooling and heating features in this architect-designed home built in a conventional Albuquerque neighborhood.

“I call it my birdbath,” says Julie of the pond that moistens and cools the breeze wafting through an open living room window. “But I like it, too.”

Albuquerque architect Don Dudley, of G. Donald Dudley Architect, Ltd., includes a gardenlike concept in all his design projects, be they residential or commercial. It may be a simple, unexpected view from a window that opens to the theater of New Mexico skies, or as obvious as lush plantings that extend an interior space outward. And when clients are amenable, this North Carolina-born architect with a European sensibility likes to extend his green philosophy even further to take advantage of New Mexico’s abundant sunshine when it comes to heating and natural daylighting.

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