Arizona's Architecture

ARIZONA'S ARCHITECTURE from Homegrown Garden of Allah to Great American Transplant

Arizona's heritage: a variety of architectural styles. (FROM LEFT) A Victorian-Classical Pinal County Courthouse. Ed Cooper photo Native American Classic, Inscription House. Navajo National Monument. David Muench photo A VictorianByzantine fusion, Pima County Courthouse. Dianne Dietrich-Leis photo Designed for defense rather than esthetics, Wukoki Ruin, Wupatki National Monument, right. All masonry construction, Wukoki's sandstone slabs were stripped from neighboring formations. An area of mingled cultures, Wupatki contains approximately 800 ruins, from small earth lodges to large pueblos. Jerry Jacka photo (BELOW) A classic dessert dwelling, the Contemporary Pueblo design of the Empie home in Carefree parallels the concept of Frank Lloyd Wright: architecture must be harmonious with the land. H. Empie photo It was a chilly, drizzly, and dreary December day in 1977, not one to spark the flare of genius for these ten acres of dessert northeast of Phoenix. Yet, here was a Santa Fe architect threading his way through the arroyos and ocotillo for a client, a third-generation Arizonan who had thought he wanted a territorial or ranch house out here.

A better idea struck like a thunderbolt. There was a congregation of boulders on the site, some of them twenty feet high. Certainly, they would overwhelm any dwelling he might build beside them. So why not build the house of the boulders, among the boulders, within the boulders?

Why not let the site become the house? It was a radical (and terrifically expensive) idea, but it meshed with the philosophy. In all buildings, try to make it seem as if a seed has been planted and Nature grew the architecture.

And Nature grew the architecture. A refrain for one of the two theme songs of architecture in Arizona through the last thousand years. From Wupatki to Wright and beyond, we have worked to create architecture that harmonized with our landscape and climate, architecture that worked with the gloriously abundant sunshine, architecture that echoed the variety of textures and bountiful colors of the surrounding landforms of desert and mountain.

The other theme plays a foreign key. Since the early eighteenth century, Arizona has been peopled principally by newcomers-the Spaniards, then the Mexicans, then Americans, and emigrants and all felt the need for some kind of environmental refuge. This landscape, climate, and culture were alien, but they could be softened by transplanting the familiar forms of home, wherever "home" had been. Many transplants were in discord with this land, and someday we may have to pay for that, but to condemn them without reservation is to not understand a human need.

Montezuma Castle (LEFT), a twenty-room, five-story Pueblo Indian cliff dwelling, dates to the twelfth century. David Muench photo A clear contemporary design expression, the Corbus residence in Carefree (BELOW) is basically a pavilion floating above the desert floor. High tech in nature, yet it is sensitive to the site. Louvers at left and right control the sun and guide breezes through the small (800square-foot) home. Architect: Edward B. Sawyer, AIA, Phoenix. Al Payne photo

In the beginning...

It was 900 years ago that a Sinagua fam-ily came across a sandstone outcropping in the high desert basin thirty miles north-east of where Flagstaff is today. The land-scape they saw was otherworldly: the soil was a medley of crumbled red sandstone and gray-black volcanic ash and cinder, punctuated by sprinklings of knee-high rabbit brush and small junipers. Atop the outcropping, they could see the snow-capped cone of Humphreys Peak to the southwest, and the shimmering Painted Desert to the northeast. And for different reasons-defense, not esthetics-they had the same idea that would strike our Santa Fe architect centuries later: their house would grow from this site. What's left of it today is called the Wukoki Ruin. Of 800 ruins in Wupatki National Monument it is the exemplar. The shape of the outcropping became the floor plan, and sandstone slabs chipped from neighboring formations became the masonry. The three-room house buds from its God-given foundation with such fluid grace that it is as if Nature had turned to the human and said, "Okay, I'm tired of working on this rock; you finish the job." This is organic architecture of a purity never realized even by design genius Frank Lloyd Wright. Drought-or a change in the growing seasona century later forced the Sinagua out of the Wupatki basin. Some migrated south to the Verde Valley, where another Sinaguan town already was being grafted into a deep cove in a cliff. Archeologists think that competition for game, building sites, and arable land sparked friction between the established town and the newcomers, prompting the fortification of the cliffside pueblo. We call the result Montezuma Castle. And it is a marvel. The stone and mud-mortared facade follows the concave arc of the cliff face, winning a precious few

Spanish architect/sculptor José de Churrig-uera (1665-1725). The telltale clues are the altar pieces and the bombastic sculpted portal with estipite columns that were twisted, squeezed, and carved like baroque totems. The execution is somewhat primitive. Small wonder, because the laborers were Papagos learning European masonry and sculpture on the job. But the concept is romantic and smashingly daring. See how those graceful scrolls prop up the towers, and how, inside, the retablo bursts with saints and angels, yet whips them into architectural organization with an echo of those marvelous outside pilasters. San Xavier is still in use as a parish church and occasional concert hall. Once a year, the University of Arizona's Collegium Musicum gives a concert of sixteenth and seventeenth century Spanish or Italian music at San Xavier. The acoustics are better than any modern church in Tucson. Our only other surviving Spanish mission is San José de Tumacacori. Although built later (circa 1802-1822) than San Xavier, it is far more primitive. While San Xavier sizzles with bravado, Tumacacori huddles in humility. Its ornamentation is a stack of plain pilasters supporting a false pediment, which points to a false semicircular gable. The baptistry, just a big adobe box, attaches to the sanctuary like an afterthought. Still, this clumsy naiveté stirs Arizonans to hold it in genuine affection: Tumacacori belongs to the desert in a way that San Xavier cannot. After the missions, Spanish-inspired architecture of any pretensions vanished for a century. Spanish architecture of no pretensions-the simple, vernacular, small-town Mediterranean rowhouse-did appear in settlements such as Tubac, Tucson, and Florence, built mostly by text continued on page 12