Collection by Clifford Nies
For all its hard environmental work, one of the most immediate of the Blue Sky Home’s pleasures is how it sits so snugly in its desert surroundings.
Eight carefully placed bolts in the joints in the steel frame absorb any movement, allowing the home to rest on small footings and meet California’s strict seismic standards.
Near the main house, James Turrell’s pyramidal Skyspace structure invites visitors into its dark recess for a chance to view the heavens through a perspective-altering cutout. Most of Murren’s museum-quality art collection is inside the house, including a Robert Rauschenberg piece, a set of Andy Warhol prints, and a hologram by Turrell.
For the landscape design, Burnette sought to maintain the property’s natural vegetation and rocky ground surface.
A narrow building next to the main structure houses storage and an outdoor kitchen.
The rustic look of surfwear entrepreneur Jim Austin’s home both stands out and also conforms with its rough-and-tumble surroundings in Pioneertown, California.
The steel shading structure and massive concrete foundation help keep the home’s temperature a comfortable 70 degrees. In a climate where highs and lows can vary by 100 degrees, keeping temperatures stable would seem a huge energy drain. But the air-conditioning unit required by county codes still hasn’t been turned on.
Lodged in a hillside along the arid U.S.-Mexico border, an earthy family home absorbs grand vistas of El Paso, Texas, as well as Juárez, Mexico. A lap pool extends toward a canyon.