su libro
house of sun, house of worship Meem's churches went well beyond the boundaries of Santa Fe style, while new designs for solar homes show how sustainability never goes out of fashion.
By Charles C. Poling
This article first appeared in Spring 06 Su Casa
The Sun-Inspired House, house designs warmed and brightened by the sun, by Debra Rucker Coleman, Sun Plans Inc., Citronella, AL, distributed by Chelsea Green Publishing, 248 pages, paperback, $29.95.
Architect and author Debra Rucker Coleman has been designing passive solar homes to increasing recognition for 21 years. Her experience base shows in The Sun-Inspired House, a combination plan book and primer on designing and building an energy-efficient home that derives a significant proportion of its heating from the sun (and its cooling from energy-conscious design and construction techniques, as well).
The book itself has a certain unsophisticated façade that soon yields to the high quality of the information it purveys and the authority of Coleman’s broad-reaching, research-based recommendations. Ranging far and wide over topics of solar theory and practice, home design, construction techniques, energy efficiency, and places to go for more information, Coleman has assembled a valuable workbook for anyone considering building a solar-assisted home.
Coleman starts with an overview of solar terms and concepts, then moves on to consider the roles of architect and builder. She is most interested in passive solar homes, which let sunlight shine on mass to store heat. Detailed discussions delve into construction details—the foundation, floors, walls, roof, windows, and doors—that enable solar design and energy efficiency. Coleman provides enough detail in costs and methods to make the case for the sun-inspired house in dollars and (common) sense, not just moral imperative.
According to Coleman, a home with carefully designed and built passive solar design and energy-saving features can achieve an 80 percent savings on energy bills versus a conventional house. She also runs the calculations to demonstrate that the additional construction costs associated with these features will still result in a net savings over time.
Why aren’t we all doing it?
The formula is simple: maximize south glass, incorporate thermal mass to balance temperature, use overhangs to block summer sun, and insulate heavily.
The Sun-Inspired House reproduces 50-plus actual plans for such homes, many of which could be easily adapted to Southwest style, since the solar features will work anywhere. The floor plans address a variety of homeowner needs for space, flow, privacy, and so on, without compromising south glass to admit sunlight and allow mass to absorb it. Along with the plans, Coleman’s narrative describes each home design, its special features and construction details, and ideas for modifying the plan. To help readers start browsing, a handy chart lists all the plans with their percentage of south glass to floor space (a key solar indicator), square footage, and number of bedrooms.
The back of the book includes useful chapters on construction drawings and frequently asked questions about the process of solar home design and construction, plus appendixes covering building codes and a long list of resources, including books, magazines, and websites.
Packed with rigorously validated advice on solar design, The Sun-Inspired House is a useful book for anyone—from homeowner to builder to architect—evaluating the benefits, cost-effectiveness, and available options for a passive solar house.
Churches for the Southwest, the Ecclesiastical Architecture of John Gaw Meem, by Stanford Lehmberg, W. W. Norton & Company, NY, 70 color illustrations, 128 pages, hardcover, $50.
Regular readers of Su Casa know the late John Gaw Meem as the architect who—more than any other individual—defined the design vocabulary, historical referents, and material selections of Santa Fe style. Many people might not realize, however, that he cut his teeth restoring and designing churches.
Meem designed numerous homes in the Santa Fe and Albuquerque areas that embraced a range of Pueblo and Territorial styles. So perfect in embodying an architectural summation of New Mexico, they continue to influence residential architecture here today. Yet his first design in the Spanish Mission style was a chapel in Colorado, inspired by the historic church at Acoma Pueblo, which he helped to restore. That church had been built before 1680 (the year of the Pueblo revolt, when the pueblos united to expel the Spaniards from New Mexico for several decades). The Acoma church is a veritable touchstone of authentic New Mexico roots architecture. So while Meem may initially have been drawn to the Santa Fe style buildings of the architecture firm Rapp and Rapp, early in his career he delved deeply enough into seminal Spanish Colonial building design to internalize its gestalt while translating it to modern sensibilities, construction techniques, and his own artistic vision.
Stanford Lehmberg does a fine job sketching the ecclesiastical side of Meem’s storied career. The book reminds the reader what a deft hand Meem applied to the form of buildings, with his gracefully intuitive sense of scale and proportion and his skillfully transparent integration of function with context. Meem also was deeply committed to the native building arts of New Mexico, from his specification of adobe in many buildings to his incorporation of local architectural detail in his designs.
Some readers may be startled to see several churches in the book that bear little resemblance to Meem’s classic adobe, Pueblo mission inspired masterpieces. Contrast the stunning Cristo Rey church on Santa Fe’s Upper Canyon Road with the Grace Episcopal Church in Carlsbad, for instance. The continuity between them seems forged mainly in the subtle brilliance of their disparate facades. Yet a closer parsing of their architectural elements reveals related expressions of form and shape, of rhythm and pattern, of lines and volume, of massing and space. The churches wonderfully balance an earthly horizontal repose and a heavenly vertical yearning. Clearly Meem felt sympathy for the notion of “house of worship.”
I will confess I was also surprised to discover that a few churches I know in passing from my travels around New Mexico were, in fact, designed by Meem. I had no idea. On closer examination, though, it all makes sense—and it goes to show how profoundly an architect like Meem, with his broad scope and long reach, influenced the constructed face of this state.
Does Meem’s ecclesiastical architecture have any bearing on residential design? In answer, I point to a familiar and recent example of his influence—one of many examples—the “church house” designed and built by Trenton Cleff on Rio Grande Boulevard in Albuquerque. We featured it in the Summer 2002 issue of Su Casa. Say no more!
Contemporary Western Design: High-style Furniture & Interiors, by Thea Marx, Gibbs Smith, Publisher, Layton, UT, 150 color photographs, 160 pages, hardcover, $29.95.
If you thought antlers went out with the Theodore Roosevelt presidency—and you regretted the loss—then Contemporary Western Design will come as good news from the stone-and-timber branch of the interior design academy. In this style genre, the line between kitsch and tasty playfulness is—well, there is no line. Either you like contrasty-leather chairs with fringe, whipstitch, and brass studs, or you don’t. There’s no need to defend your preferences—you’re among friends here.
All teasing aside, I found some amazing works in the book, like the rotary writing cabinet by Don Rawlings. It’s a gorgeous, high-functioning piece of mixed-wood cabinetry that could grace any home already decorated with antiques or other fine wood furnishings. Another piece, a cleverly disguised entertainment center, had been crafted using the door from a 1949 Willys jeep; the painted window depicts a cowgirl resting in the passenger seat. Roll down the window to watch TV. That’s cowboy—cool.
Written in a florid prose suited to the material’s ebullient expressiveness, Contemporary Western Design is a quick gallop through the latest trends of this style. Prone to sweeping generalizations about life in the West, Marx nonetheless does a good job describing both the overall style trends and the specific workmanship, unique attributes, and individual context of particular furnishings and architectural details.
Chapters cover the main rooms of a home—kitchen, great room, bedrooms, etc.—plus lighting, entry doors, and so on. A certain catalog quality pervades the pages, but a detailed resources section will help link interested readers with the craftspeople, builders, and other providers featured in the book.
So if you’re drawn to leather relief imagery on kitchen cabinetry, horseshoe ottomans, heroic cowboy and Indian paintings, arrowhead tables, jumbo-log cabins, and other icons of Western Americana nostalgia, Contemporary Western Design gives you everything you need to load up the chuck wagon and hit the trail.
Made in the Southwest: A Shopper’s Guide to the Region’s Best Native American, Hispanic, and Western Craft Traditions, by TLaura Morelli, Rizzoli Universe, NY, 80 color photos, 208 pages, softcover, $24.95.
It seems every other question we receive from readers via our Southwestern Design Q&A feature at SuCasaMagazine.com is an inquiry about where to procure some particular item of Southwestern furniture, craft, or accessory. Considering that high level of interest in targeted shopping, Laura Morelli’s Made in the Southwest applies her background in art history to commendable public service. The book provides an authoritative overview of how to shop for Native American, Hispanic, and Anglo arts and crafts of the Southwest, plus an exhaustive directory of stores, galleries, and trading posts where you can buy them. Morelli also lists all the major craft shows, festivals, Indian ceremonials, and so on. Within each craft genre and subspecialty—say, cowboy spurs or Acoma pottery—Morelli applies her expertise to tell readers a bit of history about each, how to tell the authentic from the fake, where to find the “real deal,” and the best place to close the deal. Her state-by-state “listings” section comprises nearly 100 pages of detail about the best artisans, stores, and sources for the crafts in Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Texas, and Utah.