BEST USE OF MATERIAL

01. Sombra de Santa Fe, US, by Dust Architects

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On the surface, rural New Mexico isn't the most prepossessing place to build a house.

Not only are there extremes of temperature, but the protected environment needs to be carefully managed. This new house by Tucson-based Dust Architects embraces these challenges, using the environment as a creative springboard from which to launch a refined and sensitive response to a client brief.

Sombra de Santa Fe is located in a turn-of-the-century development in the Galisteo Basin Preserve, about 75 miles northwest of downtown Albuquerque. The site consists of a scattering of plots perched on the edge of a mesa at an altitude of 6,500ft, with far-reaching views across the Northern New Mexico landscape. The design team, led by practice co-founders Cade Manning Hayes and Jesús Edmundo Robles Jr, along with Natalia Zieman Hayes, Jerrick Lee Tsosie, and Jacob Downard, were briefed by clients keen to create a sanctuary in the wilderness.

This sense of sprawling nature was preserved by the design codes and master plan for the site. As Manning Hayes notes, 'when the land parcels were established, a master plan designated building areas and set the construction limits so that each house on the mesa would not be visible from the Galisteo Basin below, as well as being somewhat obscured from adjacent properties.' Other restrictions included limits on height and stipulations about colour, as well as the percentage of the plot that could be built upon. 'We negotiated with the developers to get the house closer to the mesa edge, so the owners could get a better view into and over the basin,' the architect recalls. But other than that, the new house is woven carefully between landscape and legislation.