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something new
Warm finishes and carefully proportioned massing create a refreshing blend of contemporary design with Southwestern style.
The house and its two freestanding garages to the right define an intriguing series of half-open, half-enclosed landscaped spaces.
The great room floor reflects morning light through east windows placed to leave wall space available while framing a series of magnificent mountain views.
Cantilevered second-floor balconies add space, enliven the building’s form, and save energy by shading windows from the summer sun.
A freestanding fireplace divides the dining room from the kitchen, with its stylish eating counter and Japanese-inspired mural.
A staircase of natural materials and elegant design leads to the owner’s suite.
One of the two baths flanking the master bedroom features chocolate tile and a view across the city.
This article first appeared in Autumn 2008 Su Casa
While as sleekly minimal as a chef’s favorite knife, Otley Smith’s splendid new house in Albuquerque’s far Northeast Heights is warmed by a color scheme of blond flooring, stained wood, and soft chocolate accent walls with an occasional splash of cherry red.
Smith doesn’t much like the modern label. He says it conveys a cold, off-putting image in contrast to the Southwestern warmth of his houses. But call it modern or contemporary, the house blends today’s lack of fussiness with Asian and Southwestern aesthetics in a style that works beautifully in New Mexico. Walking through the Heights house—still too new for accumulated clutter to cloud its serenity—Smith confesses that he’d love to see it with no furniture at all.
Smith of O.L. Smith Contracting is a Featured Builder in this year’s Homes of Enchantment Parade, sponsored by the Home Builders Association of Central New Mexico. His featured home in the La Cuentista subdivision on Albuquerque’s Westside and this home in the far Northeast Heights show the range of styles this builder achieves.
At first glance, the Heights house seems like a distant, high desert relation of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater. Tall monoliths of masonry play against receding horizontal terraces that step up a sloped site, accessed by an entry so subtle it’s almost hidden.
Smith, who worked with Design Plus on the design, says he’s built some homes influenced by Wright, but not this particular house. The terracelike overhangs are a green-building technique for shading the windows. But perhaps the inspiration for both houses came from the same source. Wright learned from Japanese architecture how to use a modest entry to make a house’s interior spaces seem more impressive, and Smith’s buildings show a strong Pacific Rim influence.
The California architects Greene & Greene were one source of inspiration for Smith, particularly in his use of interior wood. The brothers Charles and Henry Greene designed bungalows around the turn of the last century that popularized the Craftsman style. Their houses, like Smith’s, combine warm finishes, carefully proportioned massing, and high-quality woodwork drawn from Japanese architecture.
Smith likes to read magazines such as Architectural Record and Dwell to keep up with innovation, and there’s no mistaking his house for the surrounding homes. He said lots of visitors praise the design as a refreshing change from styles more prevalent in Albuquerque.
It’s not that the surrounding homes lack variety. The 5,100-square-foot home sits near the lower terminal of Sandia Peak Tramway in one of the oldest neighborhoods in the far Heights, begun long before standardization became dominant in subdivisions. Smith says lots in the area are now appreciating as the neighborhood goes upscale.
The house comprises three separate buildings. Two garage/shop structures downslope flank a secondary entry path leading up from the driveway in a straight line through small courtyard areas to the house itself.
Inside the entry three steps rise to the main living area. The intimate dining room, separated by a fireplace from the living room and kitchen, looks out on a long view to the northwest and into a shielded courtyard to the south, enhancing the flow of space from inside to out.
The great room windows frame close-up views of the Sandia Mountains to the east. At one end of the space, a long kitchen counter holds work surface, cooktop, ovens, and refrigerator, accented by a cherry-red mural with a Japanese theme.
From the front door, the entry offsets to surround a staircase with open wood treads and wrought-iron balusters in an art deco style. To the right toward the front of the house, a recreation room features built-in storage, an entertainment center, and a small refrigerator. To the rear a sunroom leads to two bedrooms, each with its own bath.
Throughout the house windows are placed with unusual care. Smith said the first thing he does when starting a project is to study the views and work out window placement. Rather than installing banks of huge windows gaping endlessly on a view, he places them so that each panorama is caught momentarily—always fresh, always surprising.
Circled by decks on three sides, the owners’ private domain occupies the upper floor. Adjoining the bedroom, a huge cedar closet separates two complete bathrooms, one with tub and one with shower, both with views of the Sandias.
One bath leads to a second shower on an upstairs deck. Smith says the idea sprang from his surfing days. He loved to come out of the ocean and shower in the open air on the beach. While the Albuquerque view is utterly different, with the mountains next door on the east and the central Rio Grande valley spreading to the west, it rivals the Pacific’s magnificence. And yes, there’s a waist-high wall around the shower space, with its polished pebble floor.
Smith has built all over the Albuquerque area, although he particularly likes the Heights’ foothill terrain and view. He started doing construction in 1999 when a friend talked him into helping with a custom home. After building a few houses, he was hooked on the design work necessary for custom homes. That shouldn’t be surprising—he says building is in the family tree. His grandfather was a custom builder in El Paso, Texas, where Smith grew up, and his uncle headed the bricklayers’ union.
Smith enjoys discovering clients’ needs and wants and figuring out how to meet them, and he has grown to love the experience of “building something cool.” He built the Heights house with his own family in mind. Then the arrival of a new family member, about nine months old now, made the family rethink moving into the elegant, newly finished multilevel house with all of those enticing decks.
Ten miles across Albuquerque in the La Cuentista community, Smith’s other house in the home tour overlooks the view from the opposite direction.
All houses in La Cuentista use green-building techniques. Among other green features, Smith built the house with blown-in cellulose insulation and accommodation for a photovoltaic solar system to supply electricity.
Designed by architect Michael Krupnick of Krupnick Studio, the house is a moderate 2,470 square feet, although it feels much larger inside.
On entering, a visitor’s eye is pulled down the length of the great room to the stunning view of the Sandias across the city. Also drawing visitors through the house to the backyard are the beam-roofed back porch, a barbecue, and a putting green.
Like the Heights house, the La Cuentista home is distinguished by clean-lined built-ins, warm colors, and clever, offbeat window placement.
In the master bedroom, large windows overlook the distant view, but the wall facing the house next door has two windows that stretch from about ankle to thigh height, ensuring both light and privacy. Slightly angled walls energize the home’s space. One wall of the roomy main bedroom flares out slightly, as does the hallway to the other two bedrooms.
The exterior rear wall runs back between the great room and bedroom wing to form the home’s most intriguing feature. The stucco walls recede with subtle angles and jogs, forming a narrow inlet that feels like a tiny slot canyon. For a child—well, for adults also—the pull is almost irresistible to slip into its cool, shadowed embrace and sit until night falls, looking out over the panorama of central New Mexico.
Building designer, writer, and architectural rendering artist Laura Sanchez coauthored Adobe Houses for Today: Flexible Plans for Your Adobe Home, which has just been released in a second edition.