Retreats from the heat: two houses show how to dwell comfortably and stylishly in the desert

Sunset, Feb, 1998 by Jeff Book

The Las Vegas Valley is awash in new homes - a tide seemingly flooding in (like so many of their owners) from California. Vaguely Mediterranean in style, these houses make little concession to their environment. All too often, house orientation is determined by the street, not the sun; stucco boxes substitute air-conditioning for sensitive design; and better means bigger (one casino's "See the 35-Foot Leprechaun!" billboard speaks volumes).

Granted, southern Nevada's climate is not moderate. The difference between summer highs and winter lows can be nearly 100 [degrees]. "The number of days with temperatures below the comfort zone is almost equal to the number ranging above it," notes Las Vegas architect Richard Beckman. "Yes, it's often hot and windy, but it can also be quite mild. Houses should respond to the climate, not shut it out" - a principle he stresses in his classes at UNLV's school of architecture. As the two houses on these pages show, courtyards, cross-ventilation, and other traditional features are once again being used to temper desert extremes.

SOUTHWEST STYLE

Some of the town's oldest surviving buildings are made of adobe: the thick walls offer natural insulation, helping to keep interiors cool in summer. One couple has revived and updated this building tradition for their new home (shown at left), combining adobe bricks with a wall-topping bond beam (a steel-reinforced concrete collar) for extra structural strength. This is no mud hut - indeed, it required compliance with stringent building regulations - and yet the owners like the idea that one day their largely biodegradable home could return to the earth.

The sophisticated, multilevel structure includes 30-inch-thick exterior walls - two walls, actually, separated by a 6-inch space filled with vermiculite insulation; the outside wall is finished with two coats of pigmented stucco. The spine of the house is a two-story gallery that connects the front and back entrances. Hot air rises to the peak of the gallery before it is vented through electrically controlled windows and windows in the top of the adjacent three-story, stuccoed-cinder-block tower. This natural convection is assisted by numerous ceiling fans and three evaporative coolers. Popular in the past, these inexpensive "swamp coolers" are coming back as an adjunct to conventional air-conditioning, which in this case proved unnecessary because of the heat-absorbing mass of the adobe walls. Protection from the fierce summer sun is also provided by a sheltered inner courtyard, deep recesses, and porch overhangs. A long portico-breezeway connects the main house to a small guest house.

"The walls don't really warm up until the end of summer," says the house's designer, Albuquerque architect Eileen Devereux. "Even then, it stays comfortable if [the owners] open the windows at night." For cold periods, computer-controlled radiant floor heating conducts water from rooftop solar panels, which also heat the main water supply.

COOL CONTEMPORARY

"In the desert, a courtyard can be an oasis that offers shelter from sun, wind, and blown sand," says Las Vegas architect Steve Swisher of Swisher & Hall, Limited. For him, shelter means a series of adjustable layers between indoors and outdoors. The house shown in the two photos above left is organized around a long, central courtyard. The lofty living-dining area looks onto the grassy courtyard through big windows. In mild weather, sliding glass doors that meet at a corner retract into wall pockets, merging the room with a shaded patio. A similar merging of interior and exterior is possible in the master bedroom, where sliding wood shutters disappear into wall slots. Evaporative cooling units (in addition to air-conditioning) help cool the house. As these units pull in outside air, they create outward pressure, which keeps out hot, dusty air even with the doors and windows open.

"We get a lot of warm days and cool nights from fall through spring, so outdoor fireplaces can be useful," notes Swisher; one warms a low-walled sitting area in front of the house, another the gazebo at the far end of the main courtyard. Roofing the wing that contains the solar-heated, 60- by 15-foot pool are translucent, insulated panels that slide down to reveal screened openings along the ridgeline; on the courtyard side, electric garage doors open out, not in, to form a canopy above a colonnaded walkway. With the doors open, this wing becomes another indoor-outdoor space in a house that embraces the desert climate whenever possible.