Potter Place

Designed by the late John H. Beck, AIA, this house is a striking example of early modern design in Arizona. Raised in Boston and educated at MIT, John Beck [1918-2006] became a pioneer of “Southwest Modernism”- a distinct blending of Bauhaus modern with the regional imperatives of desert living. Originally built for his wife and five children in 1962, the home was extensively modified over the years and eventually divided into duplex units. At his death in 2006 and in disrepair and unrecognizable from its original design, the structure faced almost certain demolition. Should it be saved, or was this just another architect's dream, outdated and unwanted?

I grew up in this house, this “machine for living”, and knew that my choice to become an architect was rooted in its DNA. This conviction pulled me back to Tucson and provided the energy to navigate the seemingly endless trials of an 18-month gut restoration project. It’s been a posthumous father-son journey, full of the emotions that come with tearing down [some of] dad’s walls, peeling back memories, and breathing new life into his elegant template for modern desert architecture.

The house was honored with a Distinguished Building Award from the Southern Arizona AIA and is pending nomination to the National Register of Historic Places.

Groundbreaking when it was built, the home is now a timeless showcase of midcentury aspirations and design values. Combining a deceptively simple floor plan with a transparent organization of rooms, it presents dynamic interior spaces that are at once organic, abstract and constantly bathed in natural light. In an early and unique use of recycled materials, the exterior walls are made of precast concrete panels embedded with rocks from the nearby Rillito River. The interior glass atrium serves as both a unifying element and a source of passive cooling in the summer months. It’s been a cactus garden, a rainforest... and always a place to hide from my sisters.

What would dad say? He built the house to shelter his family and to test a new kind of regional modernism… and not necessarily in that order. Through the restoration, I felt again his youthful idealism, at its heart the promise of modern architecture itself.
I learned that it’s not easy to hold on to big, simple ideas, and that time intercedes to make our lives only more complex. For a moment, anyway, I've turned back the clock.

- Gregory Beck, AIA
gregorybeck@mac.com

Year Built: 1962
Restoration: 2009
Configuration: 3BR + 3.5BA
Home: 4,000 SF + 900 SF Guest House
Property: 18,400 SF