Darren Petrucci considers each commission within the specifics of its place and within the context of his architecture practice. A recently completed Arizona home outside Phoenix is another entry in his ever-evolving approach to desert-based design.
In addition to considering responsive materiality set within arid conditions, 'recurring sensibilities happen in my work,' Petrucci explains. 'One of them is that the house is iconic in some form - something memorable or totalising.' In this particular case, 'the iconic form is a long, bent bar. We maximised the horizontal distance the lot could accommodate to capture that view and become a ridge line across the hill. Then the walls shift and move to adjust to the context.’
Tour this powerfully minimalist Arizona home
The strikingly contemporary home, dubbed the Shifted Horizon House and built for a family of four, faces landmark Camelback Mountain. Previous projects Petrucci completed with his firm, A-I-R (Architecture-Infrastructure-Research), also sit within view. 'We were hiking and realised we could perfectly frame Camelback Mountain,' recalls Petrucci, who is also a professor in the Design School at Arizona State University, of the site.
What developed was a split-level home with a plan in the aforementioned shape. The brief called for a home that would be ‘elegantly austere and really clean' in every respect - from the angular massing to the light switches, which eschew any digital functionality in favour of analogue tactility. Volumes constructed of concrete masonry unit (CMU) 'emerging out of the desert' interlock with a mass of stucco built without control joints, Petrucci says about the challenge.
The effort became an opportunity to explore the interplay of darker surfaces awash in the Arizona sun. 'The light is so intense that when you make a darker interior, it emphasises the interior and the light,' Petrucci says. 'The analogy I typically give a client is a football player putting black under his eyes to reduce glare.'
Dynamic indoor-outdoor spaces were achieved using materials including dark polished concrete flooring, grey-hued CMU block, and stucco — the latter of which A-I-R typically keeps to a minimum. The block itself is a conventional, standardised material, but its double-score profile, applied with careful customisation, 'creates this textured, fabric-like pattern on the wall,' Petrucci adds. 'It's all about the detail,' so he collaborated with builder Jason Smith of Identity Construction to additionally score certain blocks at the corners to repeat the pattern, making the material 'feel more monolithic.’
The stucco is a key element in absorbing and transforming natural light. 'It can look blue-purple, or warmer,' Petrucci says, referencing the Japanese neutral chromatic concept of rikyu, which here serves as a bridge to shift with the changing sky and a link to the ground. In the primary spaces, many of the materials and finishes are one and the same.
A devotee of John Lautner, Petrucci has long been fascinated with the organic modernism pioneer’s theorising about the foundational spatial concepts of the 'canopy' and the 'cave.' The Shifted Horizon House integrates a third element. 'With every project there's a piece that's carved, and something that becomes the heat shield—and in between is "the court." It's like a courtyard inside the building.'
The residence's 15-foot-high central space, illuminated by clerestory windows, feels like a pavilion, with floor-to-ceiling glass panels that fully pocket to connect to the outdoors. 'You can think of the whole thing as a cave, a solid that's been carved out, but there are moments when you feel like the roof is a canopy,' he observes.
Other details and gestures establish scale and considerate touch points. A handrail transitions into the powder-room door handle, for instance, and nine-foot-tall, wood-lined walls add warmth to the multifunctional great room. 'It has a brutalist feel to it in many ways, but the curves and the wood ribbon that runs through the house are intended to bring a softer, more supple feeling,' Petrucci notes.
The 'wet edge' pool appears like a reflecting pool, with a hot tub border that disappears beneath the waterline, and the property features desert-appropriate landscape design by Phoenix-based Kris Floor of Floor Associates. The dramatic, double-sized, carved-out fireplace, built of CMU, continues a datum line in concert with the kitchen island and television. These decisions operate holistically on multiple levels, creating a testbed for ideas about desert living. 'It organises everything. Because of that alignment, I believe you relax. It keeps you grounded,' Petrucci says.
