Context. It’s key to good architecture. Material, scale and siting all play a role when attempting to achieve a sympathy between what is and what will be. But there’s more to this than making nice with the neighbors or deferring to the landscape. Architects must also consider the lives their clients will lead in the home they are dreaming of. In designing a desert getaway for an active family from the Bay Area, the Las Vegas-based firm of Daniel Joseph Chenin, Ltd. created a house that embraces the rough terrain lying in the shadow of Red Rock Canyon, yet is ready to go the minute the owners turn the key in the door.
A constellation of solid, unfussy volumes, the residence emerges from the landscape like a bulwark against the piercing sun and wind that can reach 100 mph. But this is no bunker. A veteran of hospitality design, Chenin has worked with clients that include Auberge Resorts and Four Seasons. He has thus brought a five-star sensibility to the residence, resulting in a visual and spatial seamlessness. “When we were doing resorts, we had a philosophy we called ‘curb to cabana,’” he shares. “It’s the idea that from the moment you step onto the property all the way to digging your toes in the sand, you have an entirely immersive experience. From the music playing to the staff uniforms, from the architecture to the landscaping, everything is interwoven to create an effortless encounter.”
Indoor-outdoor living drives the program here, which Chenin has inventively expressed by centering the house on two long stacked-stone walls framing a courtyard and a massive, glass-lined living space that opens to the courtyard on one side and to a terrace on the other. The five bedrooms, situated for maximum privacy, are arrayed on the other side of the two parallel stone walls.
“We did a number of studies with louvers and overhangs to make sure we allow enough light to enter during the winter months when the sun is lower in the sky but block the stronger rays in the summer,” describes Chenin. “On the west side, the fenestration is narrower and deeper. But we opened the entire south and north sides because it was super easy to control the light there.”
Although a shrewd logic is manifestly in operation here, the house is more than cool geometry. Rock gardens are incorporated into the bedroom wings, and an enormous boulder excavated on site is an impressive presence in the courtyard. The most poetic part of the project is the cylindrical tower that stands as a transition between the periphery of the home and the primary entrance, which lies at the end of a meandering path of flat stones running through the courtyard. Independent of the rest of the building, this volume – cool and dark – features a fountain at ground level, and atop a circular stairwell that hugs the outer wall, a fire pit and seating area. Almost folly-like in its detachment from the rest of the house, this free-standing element is not functional in the usual sense of the word. Evocative of a Puebloan kiva, it is a sort of meditation on earth, fire, water and sky.
With its stacked-stone construction (a nod to the simple, necessity-driven structures that dotted the area in pioneer days), the home’s outer aspect is rough and unadorned. And while the interiors are not awash in decorative flourishes, Chenin’s calibration of his materials – including travertine flooring, stucco, and reconstituted wood veneer panels – generates a subtly rich visual impact. Specifying everything from furniture and fabrics to hardware and art, he strove to establish a readily apparent cohesiveness. Detailing was paramount. “We have little metal reveals that come down from a wood wall, then turn and become an element running as a seam in the floor. As raw as this house looks, it is rather like a Swiss watch when it comes how things fit together.”
While a visitor might not fully perceive that machine-like precision, it is impossible not to appreciate how the house fits its environment. Although clearly built with its multiple right angles a decided contrast to the contours of the landscape around it, it nonetheless possesses an assurance as authentic as nature itself.
Photography by Stetson Ybarra.
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