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Luxury and Ruggedness Blend in the Arizona Desert

When this couple sat down with architect Mark Tate to plan their “forever home” in Arizona, they proposed room for household members that don’t even exist yet. The idea was to make a lively environment that their grown children, the spouses and future grandchildren could enjoy. Obviously, the home had to also match the bunch, who’ll be living here full time after retirement, as well as match the area’s strict design guidelines. The result is an eclectic contemporary home with the appearance and feel of a rehabbed territorial-style house.

in a Glance
Who lives here:
A retired couple with 3 adult children
Location: Scottsdale, Arizona
Size: 5,638 square feet; 5 bedrooms, 5 full baths, 2 powder rooms

Tate Studio Architects

Situated in the Whisper Rock neighborhood of Scottsdale, the house has easy access to some of the nation’s greatest golf courses and vast views of Pinnacle Peak (right) along with the McDowell Mountain Range.

Being part of this area means fitting in using specific design themes, so Tate produced a unique Southwestern territorial-style home that contains a more contemporary interior design.

Tate Studio Architects

Here’s a strategy to help you understand the layout. (I have flipped it around so that it’s oriented more tightly to the preceding photograph.) In both pictures the driveway is tucked into the left side of the home and concealed. The entrance sequence starts in the guest parking spots.

Tate Studio Architects

“The front door isn’t obvious; there’s a route of discovery across the way,” Tate explains. In collaboration with Mark Wdowiak of Desert Foothills Landscape, the designers created a memorable entrance experience. This gate stands just beyond the guest parking spots and provides a preview of what is to come within. Tate scored some gorgeous 150-year-old wood barn beams out of Kevin Holt of Yesterday’s Timber and used them through the home.

Tate Studio Architects

A route of native stone pliers with irregular borders leads one through an open courtyard and up into a low wall with square peekaboo windows along with a classic door.

Tate Studio Architects

“This component of the sequence infers a old-school hacienda courtyard, but that you can see right within the walls,” Tate says. His partner Aileen Fabella designed the heavy territorial-style gate containing an additional salvaged beam.

Tate Studio Architects

Beyond the patio, patio pavers create a gridded rhythm, signaling a transition between the desert wilderness and the built work.

“A glance into the courtyard shows you that the space is transitioning to that of an eclectic contemporary residence and not what you’d anticipate,” Tate says. From here you can view through the front door and all the way through the home to another side of the lawn. “This also gives you a taste of what is beyond and entices you to the home,” Tate says.

Tate Studio Architects

Additionally enhancing this transition would be your beautiful exposed aggregate and integral-color stucco. The embedded stones bring pieces of the ground the walls up. Tate cannot sing enough praise for Ingram & Walts Plastering, who completed this outside stucco work. “It has the appearance and feel of rammed earth,” he says.

Tate Studio Architects

Notice the way the beams can also be used as window lintels and also the method by which the rafter tails stick out, hinting in the beams inside.

Tate Studio Architects

The courtyard is a fantastic place to take the early morning and after sundown.

Tate Studio Architects

You go into the heart of the home through the double French doors between the kitchen and the main living areas. These rooms share a large vaulted roof, with the heavy beams overhead.

The homeowners wanted their unique art pieces to be the room’s focal point, instead of the fireplace, they utilize a couple of months out of the year. So Tate affixed beam finishes into the wall for easy, changeable art displays.

A curved glass and concrete bar creates a hangout area between the kitchen and the living areas.

Glass bar: Meltdown Glass

Tate Studio Architects

Fabella designed this unique light, which stands around the scale of this space and comprises the beams used throughout the home. Jeff Levkowitz of all Sunlighting crafted her design.

Tate Studio Architects

Crossing beams bring the kitchen ceiling height into a more intimate level. Large iron pieces as well as the leathered texture on the timber along with the clavos (decorative nails) keep the territorial atmosphere. “We wanted it to feel warm and comfortable but not overly theme-y,” Tate says. Gold and dark brown granite picks up color from the timber.

Cabinetry: Steve Mosley, Handcrafted Cabinets

Tate Studio Architects

The team mixed in reclaimed timber and used a wire brush on fresh woods to give the kitchen a more aged appearance.

Backsplash: black honed granite; flooring: tumbled limestone

Tate Studio Architects

The breakfast nook is just another romantic space within the open program; it comprises a small workstation. Again, the wooden beams are incorporated, here in the tray ceiling and also used to your built-in shelves.

Plaster walls: Worth Decorating; trim: stained alder

Tate Studio Architects

This powder room was an opportunity to make some special moves, such as using one of the classic barn beams to support the stained concrete counter. Everything in here has rich texture. The sink is carved out of a rock, and also the soap dispenser is made of a piece of basalt.

The end panel of this beam sticks beyond a half-inch-thick steel plate. “There is a specific out-of-the-ground, raw atmosphere in here,” Tate says.

Tate Studio Architects

Let’s step back outside for a while orientation. This is the back of the home; into the left is the great room, and also to the right is your master suite. The home is all 1 floor; the small, square, high windows you see are clerestory windows. The covered terrace’s roof shades the windows and French doors.

One detail very important out here is the low fitting wall nearest to the border; it is a fence that prevents rattlesnakes from slithering up and settling on the terrace. There is a subtle pool fence beyond the home, too; its low profile retain out the views to the desert quite clear and leaves the house feel quite open into the landscape.

The floor plan offers you an idea of the layout and flow. Within this view the front part of the home is on the left.

Tate Studio Architects

The corrugated sheet metal roof increases the rustic family room appearance. This really is the master suite.

Tate Studio Architects

The main bedroom opens to the covered terrace. A fireplace with a cast-in-place concrete hearth tucks neatly into the corner.

Fireplace hearths (through the house): Eric Perkins, Concrete Interiors; flooring: rift-cut oak

Tate Studio Architects

A rippled glass partition stands between the vanity and the shower. A mirror hangs in front of it on the right side. This is his vanity; hers is just out of view on the right. “We gave his an old shaving-sink appearance,” Tate says.

Peekaboo window: Meltdown Glass

Tate Studio Architects

A covered outdoor kitchen and lounge off the family room include a barbecue, bar and fire pit.

Tate Studio Architects

Sandblasted concrete pavers ease the transition from terrace to desert.

Pool: Mike Ferraro, Phoenician Pool Construction

Tate Studio Architects

Sunset is the best time for enjoying the vast outdoor space, which offers the most stunning natural light display around.

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