Living up to a heritage of leisure.

Housing and Environment The Desert-Blueprint for the Good Life

It is no accident that the garden from expansive splashes of lush vegetation to small patios with welltended plants is the social center of most Arizona homes. Since the state has a year-round growing season, it isn't surprising that gardening is one of the most popular hobbies for the modern desert dwellers of Phoenix and Tucson. The garden is as important to Arizona homes as the living room is to homes in other parts of the country, and a real point of pride is the skill of greenthumbing. It's by design that the backyard cookout and pool parties are the most common social events in the urban areas of Arizona.

"Oh, but you don't need a party," Jerry Palozie of Scottsdale says. "My backyard garden is like another living room. I normally have breakfast in the garden, and after work, that's where I have cocktails. Usually dinner also is served outdoors. I can't think of any time when it isn't in use."

When he isn't enjoying his garden, he's improving it. Palozie has been called "Mr. Plant Authority" by the local press because of his winning way with green things. His citrus trees consistently take blue ribbons at the State Fair; his crop of queen palm trees is the envy of many nurserymen; and his flowering plants fill the house with blooms all year. "I'd rather spend my money on plants than go to a psychiatrist," he jokes. "I go into my garden and I get inspired."

"Well, there could be nothing more inspiring to an architect on this earth than that spot of pure Arizona desert." The inspired architect was Frank Lloyd Wright. The spot was a range of mountains near Phoenix. The year was 1927, the beginning of a love affair between America's most famous architect and the state he adopted as his home.

The poetry Wright saw in the desert he translated into buildings, from private homes throughout the world, to his own school and architectural community in Scottsdale, to the Guggenheim Museum in New York City. The Arizona desert was the single most significant influence on an architect whose influence is still felt throughout architecture.

Many still look back to Wright's original home here a canvas tent camp along Phoenix' South Mountain as a prime example of what an Arizona home should be: situated to capture the night breezes; shielded from the harsh western sun; oriented to welcome winter heat; shaded from summer's glare; melding the indoors and outdoors.

Later he built a permanent home along the McDowell Mountains northeast of Scottsdale, called Taliesin West - a community that seems to blend into the mountains in a clear statement of what "organic architecture" is all about.

Wright's attention to the detail of the desert is apparent throughout Taliesin West now a popular tourist attraction. Boulders from the bordering mountains are the main building material. But perhaps his care is most evident in the color of the buildings at sunset, they blend perfectly with the hue of the mountains in the background.

His followers still are designing homes to complement the desert. His son-in-law, Lath Schiffner, has created a home that is being touted as "the house of the future" because it uses computer technology as "an ordinary household appliance."

Wright was the first famous architect smitten with Arizona, but he wasn't the only one. Today, Paolo Soleri, founder

The desert obviously has a special appeal to men and women who spend their time thinking about how people live there and what will make their lives better.

Designer-builder Gerry Jones of Carefree is one of those thinkers. He believes the complexities of the desert are the blueprints for the good life in Arizona. “I specialize in very complex homes built in difficult spots without tearing up the environment.” His spectacular homes cling to rock outcroppings, bridge arroyos, hang from cliffs. To do that and not destroy the desert means you have to be very careful. “I used to build houses in Oregon, and there you can completely destroy a spot, but within two years it will be regrown with new vegetation. If you did that in Arizona, it would take 200 years for the land to recover.” Jones builds six to eight custom homes a year, following the theory that people move to Arizona because they love what it has to offer. “I've never been one who thought the people who come here want to turn it into a suburb of East Lansing, Michigan.” Like others, Jones is critical of how little respect the desert usually gets; how many Eastern suburbs have been built under the Arizona sun. “The typical outlook is that the first thing you have to do is level the land. Designing in the desert should begin before the land is touched.” His concerns are echoed by Bennie Gonzales, an architect born and raised in Phoenix, back when there was still farmland in the center of town. Gonzales says the desert has so much potential; is such a fine teacher, and urban Arizona should have paid more attention. As for modern architecture in the Southwest, Gonzales maintains that “The best thing that was ever done in the desert was Frank Lloyd Wright. The only things better were what the Indians did with mud. You can't beat what the Indians, Spaniards, and Mexicans built in the desert, like the plants themselves, they were designed to sur-vive.” He remarks that “The lesson of the desert is simple elegance.” Gonzales feels that much of the architecture around Phoenix does not reflect these lessons.

Another critic is architect Vernon Swaback, who studied with Frank Lloyd Wright and now has his own architectural firm. “Unfortunately, we haven't built with the desert at all we've just eliminated it,” he complains. “We do have some homes that coexist with the desert some of the fine homes in Paradise Valley and, of course, Taliesin West but for the most part, we haven't understood the desert. Its skin and character are very fragile, and once that is destroyed, it can never be recaptured.” For Jones, the secret is never destroying the desert in the first place. “It requires a lot of extra care, and you have to be a fussy perfectionist, but we can build in harmony with the desert. We must remember that the primary difference between Arizona and the rest of the country is that we have such low profile vegetation. We don't have towering trees to camouflage and sub-due our mistakes. More of the building is visible under the all-showing sun. It's like the woman who makes up her face in a bathroom with artificial light when she gets out into the sun you can see every flaw.” The flaws are there, but most overlook them for the flare that has made Arizona one of the most popular states in the nation. Although estimates vary, the Grand Canyon State is either the first or second fastest growing state in the country, attracting some 3000 new residents a month. More than half the state's 2.6 million people live in Maricopa County, which includes the Phoenix area, while another 20 percent live in Pima County, which includes Tucson. A third of the newcomers move to the state for a job, while another 23 percent come here to retire. And the weather all by itself attracts another 8 percent.

But whatever the reason to settle in Arizona, the settling has a common emphasis: Arizonans weld the weather into their everyday lives.

“I like the idea of living outdoors most of the time,” says Buck Salem of Sun City. “I do a lot of gardening I have 13 palm trees around my spa. At least half our meals are in the backyard, and we often share them with our neighbors. Arizona has so many pluses it's not even funny.” The semi-retired real estate investor says the friendly climate of Arizona is only matched by the friendly people. “There's no out-

doing the Joneses. It's leisure living here real easy going.

For advertising executive Jackie Thornhill, the lure of Arizona is the freedom and open spaces. "I don't ever feel closed in. And if I get tired of the desert, I get in the car and within two hours, I'm at our home in the mountains. It's two totally different worlds and I love them both." She and her husband built a home in a pocket of private land within the Coconino National Forest. Back in Scottsdale, they have a large town house that focuses on a covered patio. "There's no place more wonderful than Scottsdale in the winter. But if we want snow, we just go to the mountains. We can play in the snow, but we don't have to shovel it every day."

When Christina Fitzpatrick and her husband moved to Phoenix from Chicago, they thought they were simply moving from one large city to another. "The environment was never a part of my life before. But now I really pay attention to the beauty of the outdoors. Tom and I plan our time around being outside we would never have done that in Chicago."

The young attorney and her writer husband have developed a particular affection for long walks and hiking in the mountains, and the outdoor grill she used a couple of months a year in Chicago, now is put to work year-round.As they found, the predominant housing style in Arizona is the singlefamily detached house with a yard accounting for two-thirds of the homes in Phoenix and Tucson. Some yards are left in natural desert (letting, as builder Jones puts it, "God be the gardener"). But most residents, especially in Phoenix, have turned their yards into oases of green.

Homes are designed to accommodate the outdoor way of life. Usually, at least one wall is devoted to glass arcadia doors leading to a deck or patio. This is a state where the view from within the house looking into a garden or up a mountain or into a pool is more important than the facade on the outside of the house.Arizonans are likely to wear the same clothes if they're going out for western steaks or for steak Diane.

All this sets the stage for something called "Western hospitality" a sharing with friends and neighbors; the casual acceptance of newcomers; the drop-on-by invitation that is so common. The hustle-bustle associated with large eastern cities is seen as an aberration here. If there's one word to describe the life-style in Arizona, it would be casual. There's hardly any setting, from the fanciest restaurant to the corner eatery, where "dressing up" is required.

Much of that casualness begins at home, and many credit it to the friendly weather. An entrenched Arizonan still remembers she swam on her first Christmas Day here and bragged about it to her family in snow-covered North Dakota. Most Arizonans will admit they can't remember the last time they took the weather into consideration when planning an outdoor bash, from simple cocktails to an elaborate wedding. And doesn't it seem fitting that the editors and writers for this issue on Arizona life-styles discussed story ideas over a patio breakfast?

"We are living with nature in Arizona," Jones says. "We don't have to go outdoors. The outdoors are part of our lives."

Jones is one of the builders who hopes future housing here will pay even more attention to the natural advantages of the state. "Arizona homes shouldn't have many walls. They should focus on a series of spaces, rather than a series of rooms. You find few rectangular forms in nature. I've found that when I follow nature, my clients comment on how serene their home feels."

In Tucson, two architects recently received federal grants to design lowmaintenance, energy-saving housing especially for arid lands a design they're calling "Shadow in the Desert." Architect Gonzales, who has built more than 10,000 housing units in his long career as well as several public buildings, including the Scottsdale Center for the Arts and Scottsdale City Hall says he thinks the housing of the future will be the "pod house," which would grow with the family. It would start with a small home of about 1000 square feet, when a couple were first married, and then prefabricated units could be added as the family expanded.

Swaback foresees more complexes where people can both work and live (and eliminate the wasted time of commuting).

All those things add up to the marvelous gift of Arizona the simple lessons of the desert; the blending of indoors and outdoors; the casual friendliness. It was Frank Lloyd Wright who said: "The best in the world is none too good for Arizona if she is going to live up to her marvelous gift."

Business and Environment

In the Phoenix area, we drive to work under clear blue skies, and we can't help but smile when the orange trees are in bloom. Clusters of color are everywhere, from the magenta bougainvillea to the reddish-orange pyracantha. And often when we arrive at work, a special "bonus" is waiting - a workplace that carries on the theme of beautiful Arizona.

Several examples exist on how to blend business atmosphere with pleasant environment for the mental well-being and enjoyment of employees; how to incorporate gardens and picnic spots into a "building envelope" that also must accommodate parking spots and work areas.

Driving up north 24th Street, in Phoenix, you could easily miss the American Express building, with its high bermed lawns and subdued color. When the developers first sought city approval for the building, they promised it wouldn't mar the view of the Phoenix Mountains in the background, and they carried through in a way many applaud.

In Scottsdale, the Armour-Dial complex near the airport is really two buildings, but they're so well landscaped and blended with surroundings that most think of it as only one structure.

Even large industrial sites, such as the Digital complex along Black Canyon Highway, give us a lesson in how bigness can be softened. The building is like a super graphic, with geometric patterns and earth tones diminishing the vastness of the structure.

At Century Insurance in Scottsdale, workers not only have the benefit of company-provided gardens, but workout facilities to get rid of tension and stress. The philosophy here is that physical well-being is as important as mental well-being.

But it doesn't take an expansive site to provide green relief. In downtown Phoenix, rooftops of some high-rise buildings sport patios and trees growing in containers, perfect spots for sky-high luncheons. And the City of Phoenix has razed a block of blighted buildings to provide a park where many downtown workers kick off their shoes for a picnic under olive trees. - Jana Bommersbach