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Call and response
The Southwest has long
entertained an inspired and inspiring dialog between
sacred architecture and residential design. Actually,
it began as more of a sermon in Spanish, a one-way
message from the clerical world to the secular. More
recently, New Mexico has earned a reputation for spiritual
and religious eclecticism, New Age experimentation,
and, not coincidentally, both freewheeling home design
and rigorous forward-looking architecture.
You won’t find programmatically sacred themes in the houses of architect Jon Anderson presented in this issue, but his deep connections to the spirit of New Mexico make him one modernist who remains attuned to place and history. With creative authenticity, Anderson responds to the local context in unsentimental and refreshing designs, some of which may serendipitously engage in a call-and-response dialog with the region’s church past. As we were selecting images from Anderson’s portfolio, I also happened to be flipping through a lovely book called A Sense of Mission: Historic Churches of the Southwest (Chronicle Books, 1994). The church in Truchas, New Mexico, struck a visual harmonic in my mind, so I went back to the Kerr/Hauswald house designed by Anderson. The resemblance was undeniable, a kind of third-generation DNA morphing of yesterday into tomorrow. When I asked Anderson whether the house was inspired by the church, he laughed and said it had never occurred to him. Other architects, like J.W. Barton, who is also featured in this issue, have explicitly applied the discipline of formal architecture to the inspirational opportunities offered by the geographic, architectural, and spiritual landscapes here.
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Though his experience includes the architecture of mainstream churches, for his home in the high desert north of Ojo Caliente Barton has tapped the deep archetypal structures of spirituality without quoting the architecture of either Spanish colonial churches or modern Lutheran sanctuaries. For instance, Barton derived room proportions in his residence using the “divine ratio” or golden mean, which not only invokes a magically elegant mathematical rule, but it feels right, too. He laid out the house so that the spring and autumn equinox sunrises lance through the house—much like they do in the Tew/Higginbotham residence designed by Environmental Dynamics of Albuquerque and also featured in this issue. These seasonal milestones connect us to the rhythms of the earth, much as dates in the liturgical calendar are triggered by natural—many would say sacred—cycles. By bringing sacred references into the home, such architecture can serve us in more profound ways than mere shelter.
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