Inside Su Casa
inspiration out back
A bright example of New Mexico’s innovative contemporary design, the Flyway View House glows in twilight from its tree-lined setting next to the Rio Grande Nature Center in Albuquerque.
This article first appeared in Spring 2009 Su Casa
Modern design, at least in New Mexico, often expresses the architect’s or builder’s specific response to the setting of a home. With our dominating landscapes of mountains, canyons, and river valleys, this region gives designers plenty to work with. Architect William Agnew won a merit award in our Su Casa/AIA Albuquerque residential design competition for his dramatic contemporary house in Los Alamos. (See “Modern outlook,” page 66.) Built on a tumbling canyon among trees spared by the Cerro Grande conflagration nine years ago, the home steps down the steep lot but also rears skyward in back with decks supported by tilting steel beams emulating the trunks of nearby ponderosa pines. Another Su Casa/AIA winner, the Flyway View House by Jon Anderson, exploits the adjacent grain fields of the Rio Grande Nature Center on its southern boundary in Albuquerque to achieve both wide-open views and direct solar gain. (See “Immaculate construction,” page 58.) Named for its status as a winter stopover for migrating geese, cranes, ducks, and other birds that wing their way back and forth along the Rio Grande flyway, the house responds architecturally to place not through stylistic quotation but through inspiration. Emphasizing views and outdoor space, Anderson focused on the home’s context as much as its content.
As it happens, Joel Wheeler’s curved-roofed, modern-leaning house sits not a mile away from the Flyway View House. With its decorative agricultural fencing, corrugated metal siding, water troughs repurposed as planters, and lush but rustic landscaping, the Wheeler residence looks right at home in the rural North Valley. (See “Ahead of the curve,” page 39.) It also hides a solar secret—the heating/cooling slab underneath. A deep portal and a hidden patio encourage peaceful afternoons and cool nights outside.
And getting outdoors is what spring’s all about, right? Even after the vague winter we had in central New Mexico, warmer days pull us out like filings toward a magnet. David Cristiani’s home in the Albuquerque foothills deploys native plantings and smart landscaping to create specific microscapes he and his wife enjoy through all seasons. Outside Santa Fe, Frank Ragano and Mariannah Amster’s tall and tidy house dishes long views from three levels of outdoor living space while proximate landscaping gradually blends into the surrounding natural piñon and juniper woodlands. (See “Backyard bliss,” page 70.) Somewhere between these two approaches, we can all get inspiration for our own backyards.