GreatScottsdale
A long granite driveway curving toward a low board-formed concrete residence in the McDowell foothills at predawn, a single warm sconce beside a walnut entry, saguaros silhouetted against the first warm horizon

An Editorial Collection · Issue No. 002

Luxury Homes

How Scottsdale lives at its most considered.

I·6:14 a.m.

“The best houses in Scottsdale wake before the people in them do - the desert light arrives first, finds the long walls, and lays itself down across the floors.”

II·The Facade

A long, low line against the McDowells.

The Sonoran modern vocabulary is a quiet one - pale stucco, weathered Corten, a deep overhang held away from the wall by a single steel beam. The architecture does not announce itself; it composes itself against the granite behind it.

By eight, the raking light will have moved off the facade entirely. There is a fifteen-minute window each morning when the wall looks like this.

A long horizontal facade of a Scottsdale desert residence in raking morning light, pale stucco and weathered Corten steel, a single century saguaro to the right, McDowell granite ridgeline behind

III·Arrival

A door is also a room.

An oversized bronze pivot door ajar at the threshold of a Sonoran modern home, framed by oiled walnut paneling and a honed travertine floor, morning light spilling in from the courtyard beyond
Threshold - oiled walnut and bronze

The entry of a well-built Scottsdale home is rarely a single gesture. A pivot door of blackened bronze. A short walnut-lined corridor. A glimpse of courtyard beyond. The house is already telling you what kind of life it intends to make possible.

A great room in a Scottsdale desert modern home with a soaring clerestory window casting a single rectangular shaft of morning sunlight across a polished concrete floor and a low linen sofa, walls of warm plaster and walnut millwork

IV·First Light

Light is the first material in the room.

Before the furniture, before the art, there is the way a single clerestory slot drops a tall rectangle of light across the plaster wall and onto the polished concrete floor.

Scottsdale architecture is at its best when it remembers that the sun is doing most of the work.

V·Craftsmanship

Worked, not finished.

A monolithic honed limestone kitchen island in a Scottsdale modern home, oiled walnut cabinetry behind, a row of slender bronze pendant lights above, a single bowl and a wooden cutting board on the counter, morning light through a long horizontal slot window
Limestone, walnut, bronze
Macro detail of an oiled walnut cabinet joint meeting a blackened bronze cabinet pull, with a sliver of honed travertine wall beside it, warm raking light revealing wood grain and satin bronze patina
A pull, a joint, a patina

A monolithic limestone island, one ceramic bowl, one walnut board. Beside it, the satin patina of a blackened bronze pull against the open grain of oiled walnut. The kitchen is quiet because the materials are doing the talking.

A walled interior courtyard of a Scottsdale desert residence with pale stucco walls enclosing a single century saguaro on crushed granite, a low concrete bench along one wall, deep shadow on one side and brilliant Sonoran light on the other

VI·The Inner Room

The desert, held at arm's length.

The courtyard is the oldest idea in desert architecture - a piece of sky framed by four walls, a single saguaro standing in for everything outside them.

A thirty-foot wall of glass in a Scottsdale modern home slid fully open to the Sonoran desert, living room of concrete and walnut on the left, desert terrace and ridgeline on the right, late afternoon long-shadow light, linen drapery barely moving

VII·Indoors, Outdoors

The wall disappears and the room becomes the desert.

Late afternoon, the long glass slides fully open, the threshold dissolves, and the McDowell ridge sits where the wall used to be.

A long negative-edge lap pool beside a Scottsdale desert residence at noon, the water perfectly still and mirroring the McDowell Mountains and a single saguaro, honed travertine deck, deep overhang shadow on one side

VIII·Stillness

“A good Scottsdale pool is less a place to swim than a piece of mirror laid flat against the floor of the valley.”

IX·Afternoon

A wall of light written across a corridor floor.

By three, the sun moves around the south face, slides through a perforated bronze screen, and writes a grid of rectangles down a quiet gallery hall. It is the cheapest art in the house, and the best of it.

Most weeks, no one is in the corridor when it happens.

A long gallery corridor inside a Scottsdale desert modern home with polished concrete floor, plaster walls, a wooden ceiling, and afternoon sunlight cast through a perforated bronze screen throwing a grid of rectangular shadows down the corridor floor, one framed piece of art on the wall

X·Belonging

One chair, turned to the view.

A single low linen armchair turned to face a tall window overlooking the Sonoran desert and McDowell ridgeline, a folded ivory throw across the arm, a hardcover book on a small walnut side table, a clay mug, late afternoon warm light pouring across the wood floor
Late afternoon, west side

Not every room in a great house needs to do something. Some rooms only need to hold a chair, a folded throw, and a window the size of the desert.

Exterior of a Scottsdale desert modern home at dusk, warm interior lamps glowing through long horizontal slot windows in a board-formed concrete and walnut facade, deep cobalt sky above with the last touch of orange on the horizon, saguaros silhouetted in the foreground

XI·Evening

The desert cools and the house warms.

Around six, the temperature outside drops ten degrees and the lamps inside come on one by one. The board-formed walls hold the day's heat for a few hours longer; the courtyard begins to give it back.

A wide blue-hour panorama of a low Sonoran modern Scottsdale residence in the middle distance with warm lamps glowing from within, set against the deep cobalt jagged silhouette of the McDowell Mountains, a scattering of saguaros across the foreground

XII·Settling

From the ridge above, the house reads as a long warm line against a blue silhouette - a small civilization holding its own against a very large one.

A single ceramic table lamp glowing warmly on a walnut side table beside a hardcover book and a folded pair of reading glasses, against a softly lit plaster wall in a Scottsdale modern home at night

XIII·Stillness

A lamp, a book, a quiet wall.

The house has done its work. What remains is the small warm circle a single lamp draws on a walnut table at the end of a long bright day.

Closing Reflection

A Scottsdale house is not a building set down in the desert. It is the desert agreeing, for a little while, to be lived in.

The Editors - Great Scottsdale

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