One of the most interesting features of Elisabeth Sherif’s very interesting house (see “Testing the limits in Santa Fe,” page 54) is a barrel vault made from a corrugated metal culvert bisected longwise, capping the living room like an inverted trough. It’s an elegant way of vaulting the ceiling without blowing the budget. The idea evolved collaboratively between Sherif and her architect, Andrew Burmeister, then builder Brad Gummersall puzzled out how to cut a culvert in half without it springing cockeyed like an overstretched Slinky. The vault perfectly suits the industrial-Santa Fe-Mexican modern vibe of the home, setting the tone for other creative eureka breakthroughs, like the silo that domes the master bath. In repurposing these industrial elements, Sherif, Burmeister, and Gummersall took risks—successfully.

Risk forever yanks the lead rope of creativity. Perhaps no place in New Mexico has such a long-standing association with radical risk and its sometimes messy outcomes as Taos. Pick your era—pick your decade—and something wild was going on there. Perhaps influenced by the archetypal, transcendently earthy-and-elegant Taos Pueblo, building in Taos has often expressed exuberant on- and off-the-wall creativity, particularly in the hippie heyday that Vishu Magee recalls with clear-eyed fondness (see “Building Taos’s hippest houses,” page 70). Some of it screams, “Tear me down!” Some of it works, like the