Classic New Mexico architecture meets the latest in sustainable technology in architect Michael F. Bauer’s high-desert passive-solar villa
Conscious Building
By Stephanie Pearson | photos by Chas McGrath
“In a few hundred years it’ll just melt back into the earth,” Michael F. Bauer says of his latest realized vision. The Santa Fe architect and I are driving south toward the Ortiz Mountains down a dirt road in the Commonweal Conservancy, a new conservation-based community development near Lamy, New Mexico. We’re scanning the big horizon for a 3,724-square-foot home rooted in the classic architecture of Northern New Mexico and infused with state-of-the art sustainable upgrades and the whimsical, eclectic tastes of owners Dinah and Jarratt Applewhite.
But there’s a problem: The house, with its two-foot-thick exposed rammed-earth walls, blends into the landscape so well that we can’t find it. Bauer throws his Audi in reverse and we speed back down the empty road until we eventually spot the sharp outline of the Applewhites’ butterfly roof and make a beeline toward it.
“So far this is the most sustainable house that’s been realized in construction in my career,” says Bauer, who has been practicing architecture in Santa Fe since 1971
From the driveway, the house’s scalloped walls look like earthen waves that float just a few feet above the cholla cactus. We enter the courtyard through a massive, eight-foot-tall gabion-and-steel-framed gate filled with black volcanic rock that was hauled over from the Caja del Rio plateau, into a serene Islamic garden. Three Yucca rostrata grow in a concrete trough alongside a 37-foot reflecting pool and fountain made of poured-in-place concrete. Nearby, a stone sculpture by the late Case Cohn leans precariously off kilter, and seven rusting porch chairs that Jarratt bought on eBay sit under the rusting corrugated tin portal, adding a touch of parched-desert-West-meets-Appalachia.
Surprises abound at the Applewhite house. The enclosed courtyard and 1,640 square feet of portal—the only link between the house’s main living spaces—may faintly resemble classic Northern New Mexico architecture, such as the 1804 Martinez Hacienda in Taos, but beyond those two elements, Bauer and the Applewhites didn’t hem themselves in with tradition.
“We wanted to take advantage of the wonderful views and give the feeling of being in nature,” Dinah says as she opens a sliding door from the courtyard, revealing an uninterrupted panorama
Left: The light-filled living area divided by Larry Swann’s patchwork-steel fireplace; Middle and right: The fully enclosed courtyard was designed to include certain features of an Islamic garden, including an elongated pool of water and the shifting interplay of sun and shade.
“Our mantra was ‘Outside in,’ says Dinah. The former interior designer and her husband, an entrepreneur and fine-art photographer, gave Bauer free rein to design the house’s shell, which he did in 2005. Bauer, in turn, stepped back to give the Applewhites space to design the interior.
“We wanted to take advantage of the wonderful views and give the feeling of being in nature,” Dinah says as she opens a sliding door that leads from the courtyard into the main living area, which immediately gives way to an uninterrupted panorama from Glorieta Mesa to the Sandias.
“One of the things we loved most about the lot were the many wild animals that wandered by: pronghorns, coyotes, tarantulas, bull snakes, prairie rattlers, and dozens of bird species.”
The Applewhites also wanted to construct a cost-efficient house that made almost zero impact on its surroundings. At least 30 percent of the building materials, such as the exposed steel I beams, was salvaged from Denver, reducing costs by more than 60 percent. The cost per square foot was $150.
“So far this is the most sustainable house that’s been realized in construction in my career,” says Bauer, who has been practicing in Santa Fe since 1971.
With 24 solar panels out back that power a 10-kilowatt photovoltaic system, the Applewhites not only furnish all of their own electricity; they get monthly $75 refund checks from PNM. For drinking water they use a community well, but also have a catchment system that stores all of the rain and snowmelt from the sloping roof in a 6,600-gallon cistern, and a black-water treatment system that treats all of the household effluent for a drip irrigation system.
For further efficiency the Applewhites turned their backs on the northern views of the Sangre de Cristos, installing almost all south-facing windows instead and adding a few windows at the peak of the butterfly roof to increase light and capture more passive-solar energy.
The Applewhite house passes the eco test. But what makes it stand out among all the other sustainable homes in Santa Fe is Dinah and Jarratt’s ability to turn just about any found item into a practical piece of art.
To wit: The wood-burning fireplace that separates the living room from the dining area is a prefab unit retooled by artist Larry Swann. Working from the Applewhites’ design, he used patchwork perforated steel plate rescued from an old Purina factory and turned the fireplace into a cubist centerpiece. Set into the concrete floor next to it is a medium-size lava boulder, a nod to Mexican architect Luis Barragán.
The kitchen is an amalgam of Ikea and found items: The Applewhites bought their Sub-Zero refrigerator from a repairman who had rescued it from a woman who complained that the door squeaked. And they topped their cherry red Ikea cupboards with zinc counters.
The library, which opens onto a fresh-air portal that eventually leads to the master suite
“We thought zinc sounded romantic because they use it in bars in Paris,” says Dinah.
In what she likes to call her “kinky black bathroom,” Dinah lined the walls with black Pirelli rubber flooring and left the concrete floor bare. “I love Pirelli flooring, but hate it when it gets dirty!” she explains.
Between the Applewhites’ whimsical sense of humor and their use of bold Mexican colors—canary yellow in the library, deep mustard in the guest wing, and sky blue near the master wing—there’s a lot to look at. But eventually the eye always wanders back outside. It has to: To reach the laundry room, the master wing, Dinah’s office, or the two guest bedrooms from the main living area, you have to go
al fresco.
“We did not want halls,” says Dinah. “It’s such a miracle to have birds and coyotes trotting by that we wanted the comfort of being inside, but to really be out in nature.”
From the Spring/Summer 2010 issue
