When Alexis Higginbotham and Archie Tew decided to build, they had a powerful emotional sense of their future home and an extensive, detailed wish list, but they had yet to form a clear visual image. They felt its soul but couldn’t picture its body. And they had a name: Hale Malama, “house of caring” in Hawaiian.

They wanted a house that blended into its magnificent natural surroundings with a minimal footprint on the ground. They wanted it to be “animal friendly” to accommodate their menagerie of dogs, horses, cat, and spur-thighed African tortoise. They wanted the home to be beautiful and “really green.” They also wanted it to be unobtrusive, so it wouldn’t spoil other people’s view of the hills and surrounding high-desert grasslands.

For an architect, this scenario could be a dream opportunity or a nightmare. To satisfy Tew and Higginbotham, the trick would be facilitating the incarnation of a vision, condensing a cloud into a castle, as it were, while solving practical design and construction challenges that would showcase green building and sustainability.

Stace McGee, founder of Environmental Dynamics, Inc., of Albuquerque, and his partner Kent Beierle accepted the challenge and by all accounts succeeded brilliantly. “To say the least, it was a challenging task,” says McGee, “but so worthwhile!”

 

McGee founded the firm in 1998, emphasizing alternative energy, green building, and sustainable development. EDI now designs for clients in Florida, Colorado, Arizona, and New Mexico.

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