Real House frames the boldness and subtleties of the Sonoran Desert, translating these qualities into spaces that a young family of five can call home.

A driving part of the design process was site selection with the clients. Their ambition was to find a foothills parcel with panoramic views, however, as this kind of property was unavailable, we instead transformed the opposite of their preconceptions into an opportunity. Situated on an introverted parcel along a quiet arroyo — with seemingly no views — downslope from a busy road and surrounded by neighbors, the design is transformative. The home reveals a dramatic sightline down the arroyo, while surprisingly capturing the opposing panoramic range of the Santa Catalina mountains.

Artful siting, architectural framing, and the use of mirrors, stage views near and far and transform the low-lying riparian prospect of the lot into an experience of expansive solitude that edits out the neighbors and amplifies the raw beauty of the desert. The positioning of the home also integrates careful topographic cut and fill manipulations to minimize desert habitat disturbance and skirt the banks and setbacks of the arroyo’s protected flood plain.

The design of the home is also an echo of desert architectural traditions. The form is an abstraction of simple Sonoran massing and courtyard typology. Rendered in white plaster that recalls Tucson’s Sonoran row housing and the iconic Mission San Xavier del Bac, the design integrates the region’s wisdom of passive indoor-outdoor connections to tune contemporary living with the sun, water, and natural world.

The purposeful consideration of views is central to the concept and experience of the home, elevating the dialogue between daily life and the natural environment.

Heightening the interplay between inside and outside, opposite the main courtyard, a periscope runs the length of the living space above a wall of cabinets, drawing in views of the distant mountains. Real House turns the act of looking into an experience, a moment of unexpected discovery.

To build the dialogue between daily life and the natural environment, the entry sequence into the home first takes inhabitants away from the view to then reveal the dramatic abundance of the desert. Providing a centering moment of focus and release, the main courtyard — an echo of Sonoran Desert courtyard traditions — holds both the pool and the sky. in this outdoor room, foreground and middle ground stage family life against the distant view of the city of Tucson.

Real House is an abstraction of simple Sonoran massing that is thoughtfully oriented to the sun and prevailing breezes. The sculpted form and openings into the courtyards and the interior of the home prioritize shading in the summer and passive heat gain in the winter, paired with opportunities for cross-ventilation in the shoulder seasons and in the mornings and evenings of hotter months, when cool mountain air flows down the arroyo to the city of Tucson in the valley below.

Sited along the banks of a controlled riparian flood plain, the home’s relationship to water is also an important consideration. Rooftop and hardscape runoff is passively directed to curated pockets of native vegetation. Viewed from indoors, these pockets are detailed museum-like vignettes that invite the natural world and fellow desert inhabitants to the home to drink, eat, or find shelter, in some cases, inches from curious human eyes.