Article source: University of Utah – DesignBuildBLUFF
There is an overwhelming need for affordable and culturally appropriate housing within the Navajo Nation, more than a small non-profit design-organization can meaningfully contribute to on its own. With this problem in mind our designers sought to develop a flexible housing prototype that could be easily built by would-be native homeowners. The concept of “sweat equity” is one in which the client uses their own labor, rather than cash, as a form of contribution in the building process. This design, in collaboration with the Dennehotso Sweat Equity Project, creates opportunities to more directly address the issues of homelessness across the Navajo Nation by empowering communities with the basic skills, design principles, and experience needed to build for themselves. The prototype home emphasizes ease of construction, material availability, and expansion through phases.
Renovation and addition for a 1954 bungalow home in Tempe, Arizona.
The owner/architects require spaces to live, work, and house visiting family and friends. Design must accommodate varying numbers of guests, large groups for entertaining, and fluctuating office staff size as well as a secure and safe play area for children.
In many ways, “Uptown Row” is a development between two worlds. The site is situated less than 500 feet away from a light rail station in Uptown Phoenix, between a heavy commercial thoroughfare and historic residential district. Its typology straddles the line between a single-family home and multi-family complex. It is part of a city that relies on the automobile but is actively shifting towards public transportation. This 10-unit greyfield development designed by young Phoenix based architecture firm The Ranch Mine and built and developed by Boxwell Southwest finds harmony in a diverse neighborhood, stitching together disparate elements in a refined, modern complex.
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. The 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.
The project proposes an architecture that responds to the inherent qualities of the site, privileged views, and the larger context of the Sonoran Desert. The language of the house draws upon these inherencies and allows for a greater understanding of the project’s circumstances.
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 presenced in the experience of the house while creating other introspective moments of experience.
Sited in a 1950’s era dense neighborhood in Tempe, Arizona, the Sosnowski Residence takes the form of a courtyard house defined by three sandblasted 8-8-16 standard gray CMU walls at the main level and an exposed Virendeel truss at the upper level that ultimately characterizes the project.
The Dillon Residence takes the form of a courtyard house typology. It is a remodel and addition to an existing home situated in a 1950’s and 1960’s neighborhood comprised of one-acre horse properties.
In the suburban landscape of houses that come and go at a bulldozer’s whim, our project looked at the possibilities of adaptively reusing an otherwise drab and lacking piece of architecture and interior architecture into something that utilized the existing space in a new and more meaningful manner.
The small desert Town of Carefree, Arizona is known as an “artist’s community” and a new public building is a rare event. Carefree’s new Station No. 1 and Emergency Operations Center (EOC) designed by LEA Architect’s Lawrence Enyart, FAIA & Lance Enyart, AIA, was the first Fire Station in the Town of Carefree to meet the current and future emergency service response demands of the rapidly expanding community.
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