Harris Residence · Scottsdale, Arizona

Pima Acres

A sense of place: architecture shaped by the landscape, on a corner lot where a third of the ground is desert that may never be touched.

312′of frontage on the long north line

1storey, end to end

3protected natural open space tracts

7+2guest suites, in the wing and the casita

The brief

The site gives the orders

Pima Acres sits on the corner of 94th Street and Diamond Rim Drive with two constraints written into the survey before anything was designed: three tracts of Natural Area Open Space that have to stay untouched desert, and a hundred-year floodway that clips the north-west corner.

Between them they decide the plan. The buildable ground is a band across the middle of the lot, so the house is long and single-storey rather than tall and compact, and it is turned on the diagonal — that angle is what lets the whole plan face the courtyard and the view at once, instead of facing the property line.

The drive comes in from 94th Street along the north edge, past the sport court, into a motor court at the back of the house. Cars, service and the HVAC yard are all kept on that side. Everything that matters is on the other one.

What is left over is not landscaping in the ornamental sense. The protected tracts are the buffer: they are why the house sits in desert rather than in a hedge, and why the neighbours are further away than the lot lines suggest.

Rather than one monolithic building, the house is composed of several interconnected volumes. That arrangement is what reduces its apparent scale — a 300-foot frontage that reads as a sequence of rooms rather than a wall.

The materials soften the geometry: Portuguese limestone, textured stone, warm wood and dark metal details, held to the muted tones of the Arizona landscape.

The house

Low, long, and mostly roof

Street approach: paver motor court, timber garage doors, a pivot entry door and stone-plaster mass walls under a black steel fascia — Two architectural conditions, by design: a private, controlled face to the street…

Long rendered elevation of the house above a stone base wall, with the mountains behind — West elevation, on 94th Street. Seen along its length the house reads as a line of masonry blocks with glass slipped between them.

Second long elevation showing the deep roof overhangs and the screened courtyard wall — South elevation, on Diamond Rim Drive. Every opening sits back under an overhang — the whole shading strategy is geometry, not equipment.

The plans

A house turned on the diagonal

Coloured site plan showing the house on the diagonal, the pool and lawn courtyard, the guest wing, the sport court and the motor court — Site plan. The house wraps three sides of the courtyard. A wing of seven guest suites runs along the north with the bar and lounge at its foot, the pickleball court takes the far corner, and a two-bedroom casita sits on its own to the east. The drive and the motor court stay behind the building line.

NAOS3 tracts

Natural Area Open Space on the west, south and east edges — desert that stays as it is

Floodway100-year

The high-water limit crosses the north-west corner; the drive gives way to it

Courtyardpool + lawn

The one piece of the lot that is irrigated, held on three sides by the house

Landscape site plan L-1.0 with lot dimensions, the three NAOS areas, the 100-year floodway limit and the pickleball court — Landscape plan L-1.0. The hatched areas are the protected desert tracts; the survey runs 312′ along the north line, 292′ on Diamond Rim Drive, 215′ and 235′ down the sides.

Selected Work in Mexico. Projects led by our principals over three decades of practice in Mexico, many in collaboration with ARTC Arquitectos, our studio in Mexico.

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Pima Acres

The site gives the orders

Low, long, and mostly roof

A house turned on the diagonal

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