Published Project: Very Modern Residence in Arizona desert.

1. Most Magazine articles on
bold residential designs begin with
phrases like: “the first thing you notice
is … “ or “it all began with blah blah
blah … “ But in order to understand
the home pictured here, you’ve got to
do three things: 1) Forget everything
you’ve seen before. 2) embrace your
imagination. 3) Have fun.
that’s exactly what the architect
and clients in this case did—they went
on a search for something completely
PHotos By MicHael Baxter
different and landed here. the architect
is Jeff Page, principal of a boutique firm
spacelineDesign architects + interiors;
the client is a young couple with three
children, two dogs, a thriving business,
By DaViD tyDa
A new home by SpaceLineDesign
and lots of guts. “they were enthusiastic
is totally out-of-this-world
and wanted to feel inspired by their
energetic
dream home,” says Page of his clients,
who work in the HVac industry. “We
geometric
produced a full design analysis and
concept exploration with extensive
hand-renderings, study models, and
animated 3-D fly-bys,” says Page. “the
result is an incredible expression of
modern architecture that responds
to their desires and our collective
imaginations.”
Programmatically, the home is
organized into a 5,600-square-foot
main residence with below-grade
three-car garage and a detached
750-square-foot office and guest
quarters with below-grade six-car
garage. there’s a master suite
on the second level of the main
house, meditation studio that
cantilevers off the main structure,
an underground dance practice
space for the kids, desert
footpaths all around, and a sweet
foosball table in the main room.
to get in, guests ascend a
series of shallow concrete stairs
through a garden path arriving at a
shaded main entry, where the front
door is flanked by a wall-hugging
concave water feature and a plate
of curved glass that provides a
view into the dining room. Page
calls this semi-enclosed area “the
quiet and calm entry experience
that prepares visitors for what’s
to come.”
inside the front door, a round
stainless steel column holding
up the master bedroom and roof
comes down from the ceiling but
doesn’t touch the floor – instead its

3. Right: the south-facing great
room, located over the below-
grade garage, is protected by
a 12-foot roof overhang while
slivers of light are allowed in
to slip in between the overlap-
ping curved roof lines. Below
left: a site-cast concrete arma-
ture supports the cantilevered
meditation room over a desert
wash. The low horizontal window
provides a meditative view while
sitting lotus-style on the glass floor.
Page says: “The room rests on a giant
armature that metaphorically channels
energy from the earth.” Below right:
this view from the street shows the
office/guest house at right and main
house beyond.

5. Above: the opening in the 14-
inch concete wall was made
by placing Styrofoam in the
concrete form and then
chipping it away once the
concrete set. It was meant
to express the energy of
“breaking through” for the
kids, says Page. Left: rebar
shaped to resemble an ocoti-
llo holds up the staircase land-
ing. Above left: the Moroccan-
themed master bath. Opposite: a
triple-pipe column at center holds
up the entire double overlapping
great room roof, as well as the
multi-stepped layered roofs over
the bar and breakfast areas.

7. “The meditation room rests on a giant
armature that metaphorically channels
energy from the earth.”

8. supported sideways off a solid curved
site-cast concrete wall which sweeps
up 10 feet almost to the ceiling. “it
was tricky for the engineers to get
the heavy weight shifted from
the floating steel column into the
concrete support wall; and also for
the concrete contractor to pour a
curved wall that gestures to the
ceiling without actually touching
it.” this is only one example where
the ideas of energy transfer and
tension created by negative space
were worked into the design of
this house.
in the main room, cast-in-
place tilt-up concrete walls hold
up undulating wood ceiling planes
which float over one another,
creating long, thin spaces for panels
of translucent poycarbonate—
allowing natural light to sift in and
emphasize the architecture. in the
meditation room, a 42-inch circular
“My favorite part of this
glass window in the floor allows for
house is where this curved
views of the desert wash running
below. in the hallway leading to the
concrete wall almost
kids bedrooms and playroom, walls of
contacts the ceiling, while
polished cMU block are stacked to just
below the ceiling, so natural light passes
delicately holding the
from the exterior walls, through the hallway,
weight of the second floor
and into the bedrooms. “i love the tension
that’s created in the negative space between
and roof .”
the block and the ceiling.”
one place there isn’t any tension: the
master suite. located at the top of a metal
and wood staircase that leads directly and
exclusively into the bedroom, this area is meant
for lounging and relaxation. the bathroom,
which is outfitted with an oversize soaking tub,
steam shower, two-way fireplace, and decadent
Moroccan design theme, actually measures
larger than the bedroom, where a king-size
bed snuggles up to a 12-foot long horizontal
window framing a vista of the city lights and
distant camelback mountain.
so how do the owners like living in this
highly expressive piece of architecture? if the
Jägermeister machine that was half empty
atop their bar is any clue, they’re enjoying
every minute of it. n
Take a tour this home with
DL’s Editor-in-Chief David
Tyda in a short video by
clicking on DL-TV at
www.desertlivingmag.com.