Santa Fe Residence
Santa Fe, New Mexico
Alexander Gorlin Architects

Cascading Hilltop Adobe Frames Distant Views

© Brendan Cotter

For more photos click on 'photos & drawings' above.

Crowning a twelve-acre ridgetop site overlooking the city of Santa Fe, this house reinterprets and updates the prevailing vernacular style of the desert adobe building. The 7,500-square-foot structure is situated to take advantage of a double view, from the snow capped peaks of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains rising above, to the hundred mile prospect of the plain of the city below, to Mount Taylor in the distance. Framing these vistas are a number of pavilion-like structures that interlock around an expansive series of terraces, exterior rooms that cascade down the site’s terrain, terminating in a pool that joins seamlessly to the distant horizon beyond.

The house is an exploration of the relationship between interior and exterior, of competing scales that form surprisingly different impressions depending upon the vantage point from which the house is viewed and experienced. Using the site’s slope to maximum advantage, the house is organized in a cruciform plan with one wall defining the entry court and the other, 150-feet-long, cutting through the ground plane and pointing directly towards the horizon. One descends along this wall down a monumentally scaled entry stair penetrating through the main public areas of the house.

Inside, the house opens up in several directions, continuing through to the double-height living room and the dining room or along a series of galleries, which are punctuated by the volumes of the library and master bedroom suite. These pavilions, while echoing the rustic style of the adobe construction, are articulated as minimalist elements in the landscape, mediating between nature and a rational modernism.

Formal name of building:
Santa Fe House

Location:
Santa Fe, New Mexico

Architect's firm:
Alexander Gorlin Architects
137 Varick Street
New York, New York 10013

Project Team:
Alexander Gorlin - Principal
Brendan Cotter - Senior Associate, Project Architect

Model:
Dan Schillberg, Sophia Perchia

Renderer/drawings:
Brendan Cotter

Photographer:
Brendan Cotter

Lighting Consultant:
Kugler-Tillotson, New York, NY

Engineers:
Red Mountain, Denver, CO