Houzz Tours
Midcentury Case Study Houses Inspire a Desert Home’s Design
An architect blurs the lines between a new home and the vast Arizona landscape around it
Because these clients had a love of midcentury modern architecture, architect Mark Tate channeled the designers of the experimental 20th-century Case Study Houses in creating their forever home. “I tried to imagine how those architects would design a Case Study House today,” he says. He decided this meant focusing on simplicity, carefully selecting and editing the materials and eschewing ornament. The stunning desert site in Scottsdale, Arizona, inspired a layered house that blurs the lines between indoors and out.
Midcentury modern architecture also inspired these long horizontal lines. “It’s all in the layering,” Tate says. He used a strategy of layering to add depth, delineate spaces and connect the interiors to the landscape.
The entry court is a journey of discovery as walls of different materials and heights block and reveal views on the ascent to the front door. The series of walls creates strong horizontal lines that emphasize the home’s long proportions. The simple plantings were also inspired by midcentury modern design.
“I paid attention to scale and massing, particularly with the walls,” Tate says. “The house walls, the monolithic wall, the walls outside are all in a hierarchy that makes sense.”
The rectilinear shapes and substantial depths of the landscape walls also foreshadow the way Tate plays with layering and massing throughout the house. The long monolithic wall in blended natural stone, left, connects the house to the landscape. It steps up the hill in a straight line, first as a wing wall, then to form the exterior and interior wall of the master suite, then moves further into the house, where it surrounds the fireplace and continues right out the other side to the backyard.
The entry court is a journey of discovery as walls of different materials and heights block and reveal views on the ascent to the front door. The series of walls creates strong horizontal lines that emphasize the home’s long proportions. The simple plantings were also inspired by midcentury modern design.
“I paid attention to scale and massing, particularly with the walls,” Tate says. “The house walls, the monolithic wall, the walls outside are all in a hierarchy that makes sense.”
The rectilinear shapes and substantial depths of the landscape walls also foreshadow the way Tate plays with layering and massing throughout the house. The long monolithic wall in blended natural stone, left, connects the house to the landscape. It steps up the hill in a straight line, first as a wing wall, then to form the exterior and interior wall of the master suite, then moves further into the house, where it surrounds the fireplace and continues right out the other side to the backyard.
Here we see the monolithic wall breaking to create an entry to the master suite hallway, then continuing as the fireplace surround and chimney, and finally extending beyond the home into the landscape.
Channel-set glass and the clerestories blur the lines between indoors and out even more. Because of all the glass, it’s hard to see where the structure of the house begins and ends. “I think of all the glass in this house as a partition between interior and exterior, I don’t think of it as windows,” Tate says.
Channel-set glass and the clerestories blur the lines between indoors and out even more. Because of all the glass, it’s hard to see where the structure of the house begins and ends. “I think of all the glass in this house as a partition between interior and exterior, I don’t think of it as windows,” Tate says.
You enter the house through a large steel pivot door, stepping into a compressed space and coming face to face with this painting.
As you turn a corner and move further into the house, you’re greeted by a soaring 14-foot ceiling and a view of the landscape that’s practically uninterrupted. The compressed feel of the entry makes discovering the great room that much more dramatic.
The floors throughout the house are polished gray concrete, another simple material that was inspired by the midcentury modern era, as were the marble Tulip table and yellow Executive chairs, both iconic designs by Eero Saarinen.
Thoughtfully planned ceiling heights and treatments delineate the spaces from above. Whereas the great room’s ceiling is 14 feet, the kitchen ceiling drops to 12 feet and the guest hallway ceiling behind it to 9 feet. To create a more intimate feel in the dining area, Tate floated slats over the area, accentuated by a trio of simple white globe pendant lights. “The slatted ceiling ‘cloud’ over the dining area stitches the kitchen into the great room,” he says.
Walnut cabinetry adds warmth to the sleek kitchen. The majority of the most “kitchen-y” elements are concentrated on the appliance and pantry wall to the right, out of view of the great room. And an L-shaped walnut bar floats above the kitchen island at bar height, hiding any messes. The bar also continues the motifs of floating and layering.
Black basalt columns help frame the kitchen and the guest hallway. A foot-high clerestory window, back right, indicates where the great room’s roof plane overlaps that of the guest wing.
Black basalt columns help frame the kitchen and the guest hallway. A foot-high clerestory window, back right, indicates where the great room’s roof plane overlaps that of the guest wing.
“Circulation from the house to the back patio is very easy,” Tate says. There’s a 12-foot-wide opening off the great room as well as doors off the kitchen and master wing. The guest wing and covered porch are on the left, the great room is in the center and the master wing is on the right. The monolithic stone wall continues outdoors as a wing wall on the right side of the great room.
Along the back patio edge is a shallow reflecting pool with a fountain; to the right of it is a spa. The fountain is a 5-foot-high wall that can be viewed from the great room.
Along the back patio edge is a shallow reflecting pool with a fountain; to the right of it is a spa. The fountain is a 5-foot-high wall that can be viewed from the great room.
The reflecting pool provides a place for a quick cool-off, and its shallow depth allows the homeowners to place lounge chairs in it if they want to sunbathe there. The edge of the pool lets water spill onto pebbles that hide a trough that reclaims the water. The black basalt edges of the pool, spa and fire pit continue the layered motif, their thick rectilinear edges giving them a blocky appearance.
Black basalt also wraps the hearth and continues around the monolithic wall to the master suite hallway. The master suite includes a bedroom, bathroom and sitting room-office.
“The master suite has the million-dollar view — you can see for 40 miles,” Tate says. Windows wrap the corner to take it all in. The windows are high-performance, and motorized shades tuck away into slits in the ceiling. The architect used a thick-wall strategy to facilitate the deeply inset windows. “Pushing them to the inside of the house offers better sun protection,” he says. The roof plane extends beyond the glass to create an overhang that provides shade.
The midcentury modern furnishings, artwork and accessories were all part of the clients’ collection. Tate nodded to the era with the custom walnut built-in cabinet along the wall, as well as with inset baseboards separated from the walls by reveals.
The midcentury modern furnishings, artwork and accessories were all part of the clients’ collection. Tate nodded to the era with the custom walnut built-in cabinet along the wall, as well as with inset baseboards separated from the walls by reveals.
Tate used universal design principles for the master bathroom, including the curbless shower complete with bench and handheld shower wand. The tile is porcelain but looks like stone.
He designed a custom walnut vanity that floats off the ground. The layering continues with two rectilinear vessel sinks on top — reminiscent of the way the reflecting pool and spa sit atop the patio. Overhead is a pair of mirrors mounted in front of a thick backsplash wall. The mirrors are frameless, with quarter-inch polished edges that mimic the windows, and they extend out from and beyond the backsplash wall to enhance the layered look. Natural light pours in through the clerestory windows.
Tile: Porcelanosa
He designed a custom walnut vanity that floats off the ground. The layering continues with two rectilinear vessel sinks on top — reminiscent of the way the reflecting pool and spa sit atop the patio. Overhead is a pair of mirrors mounted in front of a thick backsplash wall. The mirrors are frameless, with quarter-inch polished edges that mimic the windows, and they extend out from and beyond the backsplash wall to enhance the layered look. Natural light pours in through the clerestory windows.
Tile: Porcelanosa
In the powder room, the layering strategy continues. “We don’t like to design cabinets that look like cabinets,” Tate says. A hefty cast-concrete counter that mimics the basalt used in the great room sits asymmetrically atop blocky walnut floating cabinetry. Once again, the mirror is mounted in a way that enhances the layered look, with a reveal between it and the backsplash wall. A pendant light trio floats in front of it.
This photo shows how transparent the house is, with clear views from the back patio through the house and out to the desert beyond the front yard.
The hallway in the guest room wing has a gallery feel, with a long wall of lighted art and a niche carved into one of the basalt columns for sculpture display. The hall terminates in another breathtaking view.
The neutral platte and simplicity of this guest room’s design complement the view through the long line of ribbon windows. The way Tate nestled the room into the hillside and wrapped the corner with windows makes the bed feel like a little campsite tucked among the rocks and shrubs (yet safe from desert critters).
The site plan makes it easier to see how the pavilions fit together and how they relate to the landscape. The garage is one level down from the rest of the house. There’s an elevator off the garage that will help the couple age in place here.
Builder: Build Inc.
More on Houzz
See more Houzz Tours
Browse photos of contemporary homes
Find a pro for your home project
Shop for home products
Builder: Build Inc.
More on Houzz
See more Houzz Tours
Browse photos of contemporary homes
Find a pro for your home project
Shop for home products
House at a Glance
Who lives here: A couple
Location: Scottsdale, Arizona
Size: 4,855 square feet (451 square meters); four bedrooms, 4½ bathrooms
Designers: Tate Studio Architects (architecture and interior design) and
Desert Foothills Landscape (landscape design)
The clients wanted this to be their forever home, so they asked for the main living spaces and their bedroom to be on one floor. One of the biggest design challenges was the site — it had a 15-foot slope up from the street and there were two spectacular cactuses that everyone involved wanted to protect. Tate’s siting kept both cactuses safe and made them part of the home’s views.
As for the slope, he didn’t want the house to feel as though it was looming over the street from high atop a hill. Strong, long lines in the form of the walls and the roof planes draw the eye across the site horizontally, reducing the elevation from the street.
The landscape inspired materials such as sandblasted charcoal aggregate and blended natural indigenous stone, while the midcentury modern influence inspired the use of rectilinear fiber cement panels and aggregate concrete blocks.
A series of floating roof panels articulates different parts of the house: the master wing, seen here at left, the main living space, the guest suite and beneath that the garage. Clerestory windows beneath each roofline enhance the floating feeling.
“I wanted to break down as many barriers between the interior and the exterior as I could,” Tate says.