OUT OF THIS MUNDO

Seattle-based architect Tom Kundig is a daredevil—whether road-tripping in the desert or making audacious houses that meld with nature.

- By MARK ROZZO

Valle de Guadalupe, at the northern end of Mexico's Baja Peninsula, is a luminous desert basin, its sandy soil the color of moon dust.

At night, thanks to low humidity and minimal light pollution, you feel as if you're in a planetarium. It's rimmed by mountains, with the Pacific Ocean to the west, which gives the valley a Mediterranean microclimate, one that has fostered, with an assist from irrigation, a vibrant wine culture: It is Mexico's answer to Napa. Only two hours from San Diego when the traffic gods are smiling, it has become a destination for weekend escapes, with a quiet, haunting, almost otherworldly landscape, still rough around the edges, interspersed with vineyards and close to the beach, all set to a norteño soundtrack.

The Seattle-based architect Tom Kundig had never heard of the region before he started going there a few years ago. His inaugural visit came via a roadtrip from Southern California with clients, a couple with two young children. Having roadtripped with Kundig myself (across the wide expanse of northern Utah from Salt Lake City to the Bonneville Salt Flats), I know the excitement that radiates from him upon entering new territory, especially if it happens to be extreme or forbidding—the very sort of places where Kundig, one of America's foremost contemporary residential architects, loves to build. Of his initial encounter with the Valle de Guadalupe, he says, “I was so charged up going to this new place. And going there on a roadtrip. That's the way to experience a landscape—so much better than flying.”