Rustic eclectic farmhouse in the Sonoran Desert

Set in the Sonoran Desert, this gorgeous home has been designed by OZ Architects for a young active family in the upscale Silverleaf community of Scottsdale, Arizona. The design of this home encourages family connections while providing private spaces for each family member. Based upon simple rural Mediterranean farmhouse architecture, the various pieces of the home surround a central courtyard, creating a private compound with an authentic scale. Indoor outdoor connections are emphasized, with numerous exterior covered living spaces and fireplaces. The interiors were designed by David Michael Miller Associates, using antique building materials set against modern and contemporary interior features, working together to create a relaxed and sophisticate home. The material language of the home is decidedly livable and relaxed.

The contrasts of materiality and the reinterpretations of traditional millwork and furnishings styles are used in a deliberate way, to affect an interior that is new and old simultaneously. Materials were chosen that have a patina and can age well, while the spaces are purposefully intimate, comfortable and human scaled. The plan avoids large connected rooms, instead incorporating rooms for a specific purpose such as the kitchen which features a cooking fireplace and farm table at the center. A private enclosed swimming grotto can be accessed from both the pool and the master shower.

Photos: Werner Segarra

Tucson Mountain Retreat in the Sonoran Desert

The Tucson Mountain Retreat is located within the Sonoran Desert; an extremely lush, exposed, arid expanse of land that emits a sense of stillness and permanency, and holds mysteries of magical proportions. Designed by architecture studio DUST, the 3,640 square foot home is carefully sited in response to the adjacent arroyos, rock out-croppings, ancient cacti, animal migration paths, air movement, sun exposure and views. Great effort was invested to minimize the physical impact of the home in such a fragile environment, while at the same time attempting to create a place that would serve as a backdrop to life and strengthen the sacred connections to the awe-inspiring mystical landscape.

Intentionally isolating the parking over 400 feet from the house, one must traverse and engage the desert by walking along a narrow footpath toward the house, passing through a dense clustered area of cacti and Palo Verde that obscure direct views of the home  Upon each progressive footstep, the house slowly reveals itself, rising out of the ground. The entry sequence, a series of playfully engaging concrete steps, dissolves into the desert. As one ascends, each step offers an alternative decision and a new adventure. Through this process, movement slows and senses are stimulated, leaving the rush of city life behind.  The home is primarily made of Rammed Earth, a material that uses widely available soil, provides desirable thermal mass and has virtually no adverse environmental side effects. Historically vernacular to arid regions, it fits well within the Sonoran Desert, while at the same time it embodies inherent poetic qualities that engage the visual, tactile and auditory senses of all who experience it.

The program of the home is divided into three distinct and isolated zones; living, sleeping, and music recording/home entertainment.  Each zone must be accessed by leaving the occupied zone, stepping outside, and entering a different space.  This separation resolves the clients’ desired acoustic separation while at the same time, offers a unique opportunity to continuously experience the raw desert landscape.

Rooted in the desert, where water is always scarce, the design incorporates a generous 30,000 gallon rainwater harvesting system with an advanced filtration system that makes our most precious resource available for all household uses.

Photographs: Jeff Goldberg/Esto

Modern vacation house suspended above the desert

Levin residence is a desert home nestled on Dove Mountain in Marana, Arizona, designed by Ibarra Rosano Design Architects. An Indianapolis-based couple commissioned the architects for a 3,520 square foot modern desert vacation house that could eventually be converted to a year-round residence. The clients needed enough space to accommodate their adult daughters’ families as well, and the floor plan is designed based on simplicity, functionality and “collapsibility”, enabling the house to be operated as a smaller home when the guests are away.

The residence is configured into three separate volumes that are suspended above the desert, minimizing disruptions to the natural environment and providing shade to desert animals. To avoid covering a dry creek running through the middle of the site, the architects separated the garage from the house and built a covered bridge to connect them. A second bridge connects the main house to the guest wing. Supported by post-tensioned cantilevered concrete slabs, the bulk of the structure consists of wood structural insulated panels that are clad in either steel rain screens or stucco. The house points southeast to maximize access to sunlight and breezes.

Photos: © Bill Timmerman

The ultimate mountain dwelling in the desert

This spectacular mountaintop resort home, which was spotted on Sotheby’s Realty, is situated in the acclaimed Desert Mountain, in Scottsdale, Arizona. The stunning single level transitional retreat features an open plan with retracting walls of glass providing seamless indoor/outdoor living and commanding views of the Valley of the Sun. Casual elegance is perfectly expressed throughout this 6,000 square foot, five bedroom, five-and-a-half bathroom home, from the stone and tile work to the furnishings, colors and textures. Experience ultimate outdoor living in the enchanting great room lanai and expansive poolside patio, both perched above dramatic vistas. Relax in the serene master suite complete with sleek Carrerea marble spa. The home also comes complete with a beautifully designed and fully-equipped guest casita.

This fabulous retreat is priced at $6,999,500, which includes all furnishings and a golf membership, from here.

Immersed in the Arizona desert: Brown Residence

This Arizona desert residence is located in an expansive golf community highlighting stunning desert views from almost every space in Scottsdale. Designed by Lake|Flato Architects and constructed by The Construction Zone, the site was truly challenging, but the architects managed to plan a 4,500 square foot home that is both functional and aesthetically pleasing. According to the project developers, the house maximizes the desert views, allowing its inhabitants to fully enjoy their unique natural environment:

“The careful design makes this possible as views to neighboring houses are edited out focused instead on distant mountains. While the residence presents an unassuming, modest scale to the street, it steps down with the slope of the site allowing the spaces inside to become quite generous. Oversize pivot doors and large expanses of glass allow abundant light and air into these spaces while broad overhangs and shading devices protect them from the harsh desert sun.”

Photos: Bill Timmerman

Spectacular modern home embraces the desert landscape

Copper Sky Residence is an impressive custom home designed for a family of five by Swabuck Partners, nestled into the side of a rocky hill in Paradise Valley, Arizona. The architects design was guided by the clients love for outdoor living and the inherent qualities that the surrounding native desert landscaping has to offer. The deep roof slopes conform to the slope of the mountain and cantilevered terraces help to mitigate the home’s imprint on the property.

The use of desert colors and textures helps to blend the home into the landscape. The municipality would not allow a three-story structure, so the garage was ingeniously tucked underneath the main living floor, while the master suite occupies the top floor. Boulders were applies to the sides of the retaining walls along the driveway to create the appearance that it was carved out of the hillside.

The 19,000 square foot home sits on five acres with four bedrooms, which includes a guest house with one bedroom and one bathroom. The interior spaces were designed by interior design firm David Michael Miller Associates. The interiors of the home take full advantage of the natural light and the surrounding views and blur the boundaries between the interior and exterior. The indoor and outdoor spaces range from soaring and open to small and intimate.

The entry terrace leads from the garage level up to the front door. The guest house is on the right side of this image.

The entry door has been constructed of 5-inch-thick mahogany panels that floats between layers of laminated glass. A grid of 21 panels of onyx appears to float above the entryway.

Large cantilevers offer shade from the Arizona sun, keeping the house cooler and creating terraces.

The great room features a grid of Fossil Creek flagstone flooring.

Comfortable and casual dining room, yet simple and elegant.

The kitchen picks up on a darker desert palette that includes Red Dragon granite and Wingate black cabinetry.

Cozy, quiet home office.

The master bedroom retreat features an incredible view to the mountains as well as city lights in the distance. To take advantage of the view, a motorized 12-foot x 15-foot door opens to a private terrace with a fire pit.

Upstairs, a sitting area in the master suite makes the top floor its own retreat.

Master bedroom sitting area, with indoor / outdoor appeal, and drastic city views.

A bedroom opens to a mountain terrace and abuts 12-foot by 18-foot boulders.

Spa-like bathroom set right up against the mountain.

Well-placed boulders cleverly conceal an outdoor shower, providing privacy yet keeping the open-air feeling.

The hillside was reconstructed to support a waterfall with a geotech mesh for safety, boulders were brought in and moved to cover it.

The designers made sure that the tint of the patio’s concrete matched the landscape.

A waterfall flows down from the top of the hill, giving the illusion that it flows under the back patio, is brought through the house and terminates at this fountain.

Striking contemporary home in the Arizona desert

This spectacular home was designed around the landscape for an Ohio couple who fell in love with the area of North Scottsdale, Arizona. Sefcovic Residence has been designed by Tate Studio Architects, the scope of the project was to create a space that was open, airy and connected to the landscape. The site was chosen for its incredible views, and the design was created to ensure that the couple could live in the view from every room in the house. The architectural design of the 6,300 square foot, 5 bedroom and five-and-a-half bathroom home followed the surrounding landscape, the hallway bending with the curved spine of the land. The architect’s response to the spine was to create a series of radial lines that emanate from it. Unique angles were created throughout the home, as well as spectacular mountain views.

The entrance of the home opens to a spacious and open floor plan with very few walls. To define the rooms, elements were applied such as changing ceiling heights, lighting design and varying levels. Every room in the residence features at least one wall of glass with channel-set glazing to allow the glass to disappear into the walls, blurring the line between indoors and out. The glass stairwell absorbs sunlight during certain times of the day, providing passive solar heating during the winter months, picking up warmth and circulating it.

Rectangular floating wood panels along the hallway ceiling defines the spine of the house, which connects all the rooms on the first floor.

Arizona brown schist, a native stone on the property, extends seamlessly from interior to exterior walls, as do the pebbles at the edge of the floor.

Suspended reclaimed wood beams radiate toward the great room, highlighting its structural integrity. Beyond the floor-to-ceiling glass, a signature stacked-stone and copper fireplace wall the home’s alfresco living room reflects its indoor counterpart.

The three-sided cantilevered fireplace creates a eye-catching transition between the large great room and the more intimate hearth room.

Bold blue accents reminiscent of the vibrant Arizona skies are found in most of the interior spaces

The walls around the stairwell are also angled with respect to the curve, so each stair had to be designed to be a slightly different shape and size from the last.

The backsplash of the vanity is comprised of vertical natural limestone and iridescent glass tiles

Copper fascia unities the multi-leveled roofline, creating a streamlined appearance that blends with the surrounding desert.

Photos: Mark Boisclair

Stunning modern dwelling in the mountains

The Jarson Residence was designed as a vessel of personal discovery for two real estate professionals with an educated passion for modern architecture and their two sons. Designed by architecture firm will bruder+PARTNERS in Paradise Valley, Arizona, the 4,440 square foot home gracefully embraces the topographic fold of a desert wash, the house focuses on the northeasterly view of the McDowell Mountains in the distance. With its simple shed roof and deep overhangs, the house is a sculptural form of weathered steel and copper. A large weathered steel vessel for swimming emerges from the natural desert adjacent to a shaded raised gravel terrace.

Entry, office and bedrooms, are on the upper level with the primary living and dining experience, a media / music chamber and potter’s studio tucked beneath. Cork and concrete floors, wall planes of translucent glass, and cabinets of cherry and stainless steel articulate the interiors. The upper level entry and passage are conceived as galleries for the owners’ art collection. The stair down to the collective living spaces plays against the subtle drama of the angled south façade, to draw you to the desert beyond where the double height living room takes you to the sky. Via

Visit the website of will bruder+PARTNERS here.

Photos: Bill Timmerman

Stunning desert home with captivating mountain views

The Yerger Residence has been designed by architecture firm Chen + Suchart Studio in Phoenix, Arizona.

From the architects: “This site for this project has one main view to the east towards Camelback Mountain. The intent of the project was to focus the views towards the iconic landmark to capture it and have it constantly a presence in the experience of the house while creating other introspective moments of experience.

The project takes the form of an architectural cast-in-place concrete base upon which a floating sheet steel clad open-ended volume and an 8-4-16 masonry volume are situated. An entry sequence leading from the street, along a koi pond, into the entry, and to a negative edge pool distinguish the main public spaces and master suite while offering a place of repose.

The main living space of the house maintains an open plan configuration and borrows Camelback Mountain and brings it into this space. This relationship is further maintained by the ability to slide sliding glass doors completely away for an uninhibited view. Two guest bedrooms, also part of this open-ended volume, afford the view due to the plan configuration of the bathroom and closet spaces along the west elevation.

The master suite by contrast is a more cellular division of spaces that control views and privacy. A study is located at the same level as the entry and living space while the master bedroom and master bathroom are situated higher in section to allow for additional privacy. The master bedroom has one specific corner view whose sliding glass door is mounted to the exterior of the CMU volume in order to exacerbate the specifity of this view. For reasons of privacy, the master suite is an introverted and focused series of interior spaces and exterior spaces while still maintaining a view to Camelback Mountain from the master bedroom.

The interior finishes of the project juxtapose highly refined materials with raw industrial materials in order to heighten one another’s unique qualities. The interior finishes are comprised of polished wenge millwork, non-directional stainless steel countertops, white Carrera marble, and terrazzo flooring. These finishes constantly enter a dialogue with one another by means of their configuration and junctions.” Via

Visit the the website of Chen + Suchart Studio here.

Photos: Bill Timmerman of Timmerman Photography

Modern concrete and glass desert home

This incredible project is on a site with fabulous mountain views of Paradise Valley, Arizona. Designed by architecture firm Chen + Suchart Studio, this 3,968 square foot (368.64 square meters) residence is comprised of a series of parallel sandblasted concrete block walls configured in a way that allows the landscape and the views to flow freely through the spaces. These walls orient the spaces to the undisturbed views of Pinnacle Peak, the McDowell Mountains, Four Peaks, and the Superstition Mountains, while controlled openings within the walls to capture characteristics of the immediate site and landscape, specific views of the mountains beyond, and the desert sky.

The garages and entry court are located on the first level. The majority of the project’s program is located on the main level at one elevation due to the clients age. Two other bedrooms are located at different elevations, and by means of the section, allow for privacy and a more distinct focus on the specific qualities of views and the desert landscape. Via

A metal clad roof is situated between the concrete block walls and inflects to focus on specific views.

Photos: Bill Timmerman of Timmerman Photography