Real Arizona Blog

Breezes vs Windy. It is an age old concern of many of us. I called a neighbor at the Salero Ranch who had been down from Phoenix for our annual Property Owners Association meeting on Saturday last and she told me she had left early for her return drive because of the windy conditions. If I had ever thought of that as being a factor for a drive I was going to make, I must have forgotten it. But she was right, Sunday was very windy at the ranch and she had a good point, why fight it?

When it comes to home design, there are ways to work with the indoor & outdoor space and professional designers & architects know how to gain the advantage when designing a project. It's not only wind but here in Arizona, it's the sun and solar orientation and sun angle through out the day that complicates a design. True to Arizona, as much time is spent in the outdoor spaces as indoors and this calls for some creative thinking.

An article in Sunset Magazine is linked here The meeting of indoors and out and it goes into the thoughts of a well respected Tucson Architect Paul Weiner. He has been working the outdoors in for many years with architecture around Tucson and runs his Design Build Collaborative company specializing in sustainable materials and architecture. His designs look to me both aged and ageless. There are few homes that blend in so well as Paul's designs do here in Southern Arizona.

I guess we can't "control" the weather, at least not to our liking, but we can design for its inevitability in the desert environment. Much of what is built today is not well thought out but it certainly becomes a Living Home if it is and is thought out creatively.

Let me know what your thoughts and experiences are with "natural architecture".