Two adjacent bungalow houses on Luna Boulevard near downtown Albuquerque are bulging with architectural images of New Mexico’s next design horizon—a refined regional modernism being expressed by architect Jon Anderson and others. With a series of elegant and dramatic houses built in Albuquerque in the 1990s, Anderson has successfully married the best intentions of great modernist designers with the demands of New Mexico’s climate and building technology.

Anderson’s impressive portfolio of commercial and residential work is the growing aesthetic foundation for his own dream house, but for now the immaculate white walls of his modified bungalow home (built in 1918) provide planes of departure for a discussion of state-of-the-art housing design in the Southwest.

“Le Corbusier said that white is the only possible color for interior walls, because it’s a noble backdrop for human activity,” Anderson explains, referencing the iconic French modernist architect. Anderson’s houses are drenched in glorious daylight shaped by his distinctive and magnificently scaled window compositions.

Even within his own historic house, constructed before the popular use of “modern” elements such as stainless steel and metal casement windows (which Anderson loves), the interplay of light and furnishings reveals the artist’s sensibilities. A pair of black leather and chrome sofas designed by Le Corbusier in 1928 provides a counterpoint to the undulating ebony mass of a grand piano. Juxtaposition of black furniture forms is a favorite Anderson motif, where practicality and comfort are not overwhelmed by the exacting standards of minimalism. issues.

 

In exterior façade design, however, precise and proportional minimalism is often the most effective approach, as Anderson powerfully demonstrated in his breakthrough Bosque residence of 1992, so named for the home’s location near the cottonwood bosque that lines the banks of the Rio Grande. The soaring living area is essentially a two-story cube with a glass corner precisely notched out of it. From the interior of the Bosque residence, the immense aperture of living room window is focused on the (relatively) distant Sandia Mountains, a design principle of solar and vista alignment first demonstrated in the Southwest by Anasazi builders.

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