No Comments »

A Stately Home for Art Collectors Takes Cues from the Anasazi

• Tweet

• Tweet

Art is the heart of Casa Valle Escondido north of Santa Fe, New Mexico.

The entrance forms a broad central hallway that doubles as an art gallery.

Inside, a cool diffused light creates a museum-quality of daylight from three long skylights above the hallway.

Casa Valle Escondido by Bucchieri Architects is home to an extensive art collection.

Its positioning is inspired by the Anasazi’s use of using sunlight as an indicator to mark the seasons by singling out the solstices and equinoxes.

The house is exactly positioned, by transit sighting to the North Star Polaris at night and the sun at solar noon.

So the sun’s path creates a perfect beam of light sixteen inches wide to strike the center of the floor at noon.

The central art gallery connects all of the main living areas to the east and west, which open out to views of the sunrise and sunset over the mountains.

The home is sited on the northern slope of a ridge sighting the Sangre de Cristo Mountains to the east, the Jemez Mountains and the city of Los Alamos to the west, and San Antonio Peak, near the border of New Mexico and Colorado, to the north.

All the interior walls and ceilings are plaster, tinted to match the soft warm grey of the limestone floor throughout.

A full-scale cross-section mockup was built at the site to produce an arrangement that would block direct sunlight, with its damaging ultra violet rays, while at the same time deliver reflected light, optimal for viewing art, to the wall surfaces.

Instead, tall glazing to the east and west allows morning or evening sun to fill the rooms to the east or to the west of the gallery at the heart of the home.

Placing the living rooms at the northern side of the house supplies the solace of a cool respite in the heat of the overhead sun.

As the sun crosses the sky from east to west, the slit of sunlight on the floor of the art gallery narrows, ending at the wall. No direct sunlight ever traverses the walls to each side.

The building materials also take a lesson from the traditional architecture of the region and blend into the natural environment.

The rusted steel tubes used for columns is designed to recall the use of peeled pine timber columns of the ancient pueblo.

The natural uncut face with lichen growth is set in an uncoursed ledgerock pattern with mortar set behind the stone for a dry-stacked appearance.

This masonry bearing wall veneer is the same Pecos sandstone from the nearby Sangre De Cristo mountains.

So both the positioning and the materials of this very stately home owe much to the traditions of the Anasazi.