Inspiring home of the week: Inside-outside house in New Mexico

A harsh desert environment might not seem the best place to settle down, but bringing the outside in is exactly what makes this New Mexico build homely

Megan Townsend
Thursday 29 March 2018 18:49 BST
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The owners wanted the house to embrace its desert landscape
The owners wanted the house to embrace its desert landscape

This statement-making home in New Mexico stands in colourful contrast to its desert surroundings, the rectangular building recognisable by its bright red wall, which cuts straight through the middle of it – acting both as a design point and a means of separating areas in the house without having to add too self-contained rooms.

Taking inspiration from the state’s Spanish colonial architecture, the house has pops of colour – and a flat roof to keep it cool and protected against the desert elements. New Mexico-based firm Archaeo attempted to make the design more current, bringing in a modernist, Sixties-style shape to the property.

Situated on a 165-acre property, the Galisteo House is named after the nearby Galisteo Basin Preserve, a conservation-based community developed not far from Santa Fe – the owners wanted a design that was architecturally impactful but maintained the integrity of the land.

Throughout the house the desert is constantly brought in – with rooms easily shifting from indoor to outdoor spaces using moveable separators and glass doors.

“In an age where New Mexico residential architecture too often is slavishly imitative of historical precedents,” says Archeo, “this clean and refreshing statement of high elevation living is a recapitulation of time-honoured south-western design principles: lean and horizontal in expression, integrative topographical intentions, distant views.”

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