Located on a rural site in the sonoran desert outside of scottsdale arizona wendell burnette architects has designed and completed a house shaped around a central courtyard.
Desert courtyard house wendell burnette. Architecture projects from wendell burnette architects an architecture office firm centered around residential architecture. Hovering above the plinth is a large shade canopy that embodies the necessary sustenance for this shelter as a home. The battered walls envelop and protect conditioned spaces that surround a central courtyard. The desert courtyard house was designed by wendell burnette architects as a second home in a development on the outskirts of the city where it is surrounded by granite boulders and tall cacti.
Our portfolio of work includes a wide range of private and public projects. Constructed from soil excavated from the site the house is a mass of concrete and rammed earth walls that meet the sky without termination. Desert courtyard house wendell burnette architects. Mass hollowed mass faceted mass fissured mass mass that cracks open and hinges apart informed how we proceeded to give this home its defining qualities from the courtyard plan to the split massing all the way down to the fittings and fixtures that one touches with the hand or eye.
During the daytime the courtyard is defined by a continuous ribbon of glass the desert floor and sky. An internationally recognized architectural practice based in phoenix arizona. This small humble house sited on a south facing desert slope extends a prominent flow of pinkish red schist shale into a simple elevated plinth that parallels the contours of the site which run east west. Desert courtyard house scottsdale arizona.
The site is a peninsula of granite outcroppings and towering saguaro cacti surrounded on all sides by deep perennial desert washes except for a single spit of land affording access from an ocotillo studded ridge above. The form for a serene desert courtyard slowly began to emerge.