SOUTH BAY DIGS | Digital Edition Online

36 DIGS.NET | 5.28.2021 P R O F I L E | T U C S O N M O U N TA I N R E T R E AT A R C H I T E C T U R E + D E S I G N T he Sonoran Desert is a fascination—a natural environment that is, in its profusion of desert plants and flowerings, its rocky outcrop- pings and mountains, one of the most otherworldly places on Earth, at once thoroughly alive and totally still. There is an organic harmony here. And a house, designed by DUST, that captures it perfectly. Permeated by the smells of Spanish cedar, and seizing on the shifting shades of natural light, Tucson Mountain Retreat is exactly that—a retreat, but also an immersion in the natural environment that informed its architecture by Cade Hayes and Jesus Robles, the principals of DUST, also based in Tucson. In the same way that one cannot separate good architecture from its surroundings, one should not see Hayes and Robles as separate from their work. They strive for synchronicity and draw clues for their designs from the experiences of both site and life. They struck just the right chord with Tucson Mountain Retreat. Its owners—one a talented classical guitarist by hobby; the couple's daughter also is a musician—desired a home that would meet their needs. Namely for calm and relaxation, but also for music, to play and record it. The whole house is wired for the impromptu jam session, "so that if one is in the bedroom, and has an epiphany, they can plug into the wall and record back to the main recording space in the music room," notes Hayes. With music important, the architecture is quiet. "We tried very hard to keep visual static elements to a minimum, looking for purity," he adds. The site also forces clarity. The duo used outcroppings of rocks as the defining boundaries of the living space," Hayes explains. "If a home can become a backdrop to life, the experience of living, and living within the landscape, is the primary character of the home, and hopefully most of the time the architecture ceases to matter." It's an interesting idea. Tucson Mountain Retreat is strongly contemporary and yet, situated and shaped by the land so that it would, as Hayes describes, "transcend time, while being of the place." With its masses rising up from the landscape, the house "feels like it belongs; as it was always there." A big reason for this is the materials. The architects examine this element, along with local references (how indigenous people build and the materials they use), at the start of every project. For Tucson Mountain Retreat this translated to using rammed earth for the main building, which helps amplify the structure's sense of the perpetual. Charred Spanish cedar walls, meanwhile, complement the rammed earth while offering a correlation to desert drought. "At night," Hayes explains, "these walls fade into the darkness and at times into infin-

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