Features

Pros’ Picks

Santa Fe’s top design talents, from Heather Van Luchene of HVL Interiors to Jon Dick of Archaeo Architects, expose and expound on the greatest, greenest, most gorgeous design ideas coming out of the City Different today.

Fresh forms. Working with vernacular materials in a fresh way, like the lines and intelligence of Trey Jordan Architecture and, of course, VIDA Design. We commission New Mexico artisans to craft contemporary pieces that have an old and new feel. The emphasis is on substance, not surface; design, not decoration. Pairing the old and new. Gallerists here are expanding on the mix of ancient, antique, and modern—and they’re creating elegant and sophisticated environments. Jed Foutz at Shiprock Trading mixes high-end Native American antiquities with vintage designer mid-century furniture. William Siegal creates an amazing gallery experience combining pre-Columbian antiquities with contemporary art, including work by New Mexico’s Colette Hosmer. Tai Gallery shows the terrific contemporary photography of Naoki Hanjo with traditional textiles. Operatic inspiration. Each season, the Santa Fe Opera presents at least one really forward-thinking performance, and I enjoy the staging as much as the music. The most memorable: This year’s Tea and 2005’s Peter Sellars–directed Ainadamar, with sets by the artist Gronk.—Danae Falliers, VIDA Design

Corten steel roofing. This corrugated steel is perfect for pitched roofs. It weathers quickly to a dark rust-colored non-reflective surface that blends into the piñon and juniper landscape. It keeps our breath-taking vistas from being spoiled by light-colored, reflective roofs. Smaller is better. Megahouses not only consume greedy amounts of energy, materials, and labor, both to build and to maintain, but they also tend to be too obtrusive in our gorgeous landscape. Night flush cooling. Nights here are nearly always cool enough to allow the air to be slowly drawn through open windows at one end of the house and exhausted by a fan at the other. This cools down the thermal mass so that the windows can be closed during the day and you’ll still stay comfortable.—Beverley Spears, Spears Architects

Garden color. Who says you can’t use hot pink, magenta, bright orange, and deep purple together in a perennial bed? For a great mix, try Agastache, Gaillardia, wine cups, and Salvia, and add a deep-red climbing rose in the background. Old-fashioned, barn-style portals. Part of their charm is that you can see the Northern New Mexico–style corrugated tin roof above the rough-sawn beams. The other part is when you sit under them to listen to the rain. Large pots in old stone finishes. High fire, ceramic pots with a rustic stone finish like they were truly carved from gray stone. Plant them with classic annuals such as snap dragons, geraniums, petunias and alyssum, and they evoke the feeling of a different era.—Kendall McCumber, McCumber
Fine Gardens

Dramatic color. It’s the easiest and most effective way to punch up a space. Faves: American Clay, Bio-Shield, and Ralph Lauren metallic paints. Mixing it up. Modern can work with regional and traditional styles. Pair a sleek Italian sofa with a Native American textile for contrast and interest. My favorite resources: Victoria Price Art & Design, Santa Fe Modern, C-Gallery, Design Warehouse, and Bosshard. Concrete floors. It’s an eco-friendly material and creates the perfect backdrop for great design, plus it’s cool in the summer and warm (with radiant heating, also an eco-choice) in the winter. Stain it in a variety of colors or just leave it natural and sealed.—Jeff Fenton, IM Design

Small is beautiful. The first rule of sustainable design is to build small. It also helps your building budget. The tradition has long been demonstrated here locally. Look carefully at our traditional vernacular architecture and the lessons are clear: our buildings are small, lean, simple, and humble … and they are magical! Light. The quality of light in our high desert has helped us find unique ways to bring it indoors. Place skylights up against a wall to wash it with direct light. Place willow latillas beneath a skylight to achieve a dappled effect. Add clerestories to tall ceilings to brighten an otherwise dark area. In lieu of typical French doors, use floor-to-ceiling paneled doors that pocket into the wall to open the entire room to the outside —and its superb light. Landscape. We’re fortunate to work with building sites that have a great deal of character: interesting topography, rock outcroppings, stands of Ponderosa pines. A home should respect and respond to its immediate context and microclimate so as to be one with the
landscape.—Jon Dick, Archaeo Architects

O-Form Design. I love the sculptural quality of these fixtures and their limitless color options. They bring an element of surprise and playfulness to a bathroom; oformdesign.com. Cathy Aten. She creates site-specific sculptures made from earth, tailored to each client. They not only have sentimental connections but also healing powers; cathyaten.com. Great Plains outdoor fabrics by Holly Hunt. Outdoor fabrics have come a long way, and Holly Hunt’s collection brings the inside out in a luxurious and durable way; available through HVL Interiors.—Heather Van Luchene, HVL Interiors

Stone. The choices keep expanding; working with it these days is much more exciting. Container gardens. They offer interest in the garden, and the availability of more colors and textures in frost-proof pots make luscious plantings even more appealing. You get color while decreasing the need for water-intensive plantings. Contemporary projects. The evolution of architecture means that we can explore different materials and use them in unusual ways, especially stone and various metals in architectural garden elements.—Catherine Clemens, Clemens & Associates

Wood countertops. They’re made from renewable resources that balance ecological, social, and economic uses of forests. Our favorites: Zebrawood, Mesquite, Mahogany, Iroko, Wenge, and Teak. Bathtubs. Tubs are changing. New surfaces means you can scour them with abrasive cleansers, and volcanic limestone composites and a carrara marble stone composite allow for wonderfully refreshing shapes. Concrete elements. From countertops to sinks, tiles, and tables, concrete provides clean lines plus color that complements any style, from organic southwest to urban modern. Plus, it qualifies as recycled content. Concrete is the newest, most hip surface in the home habitat.—Kathy Fennema and Bob Schwarz, Santa Fe By Design

Virgil Ortiz, for his pottery designs and his fashion. Nobody combines traditional with contemporary the way he does. His work is absolutely breathtaking.—Ursula Gebert, Cielo, Ursa, and Gebert Contemporary

Modernization of Santa Fe Style. It represents a creative evolution of an indigenous architectural style, yet it’s not themed or contrived. Hard-troweled interior plaster. Though not unique to our city, it has been developed to an art and it has become a major feature of many Santa Fe homes. In addition, it does not contribute to indoor air pollution because it is generally not painted.—Michael Hurlocker, Hurlocker Properties

Water conservation. The best design ideas these days revolve around water. Native, xeric plants give us a unifying, regional flavor along with water conservation. Beating the heat. The west side of buildings is brutally hot in summer, so place large shade trees there. It will save on your energy bills, too. If sunset views are an issue, prune to make sure you can see under the lowest branches so you can still marvel at our evening colors. Large trees, such as honey locust and cottonwood, are good choices. Pattern. Place similar plants on different sides of walls, border edging, or even property boundaries (with your neighbors’ consent). This stylized repetition gives greater depth and scale.—Michael Clark, Tropic of Capricorn

Yuki Murata. Her contemporary moderngoods tableware line incorporates her architectural and design training (at Yale and RISD) as well as her cultural background. (Her father is Japanese; her mother is a Taos landscape painter.) She evokes the natural environment with her elegant coral-, maple-, and kelp-patterned bone china; moderngoods.com. She and her husband Chris Long are also building their thoughtful aesthetic on a larger scale, winning multiple awards at this year’s Haciendas: A Parade of Homes. Buying local, sustainable, and green. Living in the high desert with precious few natural resources, it is critical that we do everything we can to preserve them. From drought-tolerant xeriscaping to green building and solar and wind energy, we are committed to preserving our beautiful environment. Kudos to Los Alamos National Bank for creating an EcoSmart loan to support environmentally friendly home building! The remixing of Santa Fe style. Santa Fe style is finally reemerging—after fading from national popularity a decade ago—by going back to what has always worked best: the inspiring fusion of cultures and aesthetics. The growing popularity of clean-lined contemporary design, combined with historic influences such as Navajo textiles, Pueblo pottery, and Spanish Colonial art, brings our style into the 21st century. —Victoria Price, Victoria Price Art & Design

Native American influences. When I arrived here in the eighties, I was struck by the beauty of Indian blankets. I started buying them on the rez and made coats and bags out of them—I’d studied fashion design in San Francisco. I also developed a line of wall-sconces based on these strong, geometric patterns that are so classic—and they all come from Navajo rugs. Nature. It may sound trite, but our light informs the colors in our natural world so strongly—like our snakeweed glowing cadmium on lime in the summer sun. You just can’t go wrong bringing all those shades into a building’s interior. People. All the creative designers, builders, and artisans in our community—and not to mention the clients who want it all to happen.—Edy Keeler, Core Values, Inc.

Adobe. New Mexico is one of the few places in the country that can boast an unbroken tradition of earth construction. Earth is biologically compatible, ecological in its production, is locally created, can be non-toxic (if unstabalized), biodegradable, and renewable. Santa Fe has brought a national following to the “mud hut.” Outdoor rooms. Our mild and virtually mosquito-free climate makes us the envy of every Minnesotan. We do outdoor rooms exceptionally well. A few simple architectural gestures skillfully applied can create quality places. Portals that shade us, outdoor kiva fireplaces that warm us, courtyard walls to define space. Add lush xeriscaping (fed by rainwater collected from the roof), throw in a solar operated, recirculating fountain, and for six to eight months, you can enjoy the “big sky” in sensuous comfort. Earth Plaster. New Mexico now exports clay plaster all over the country thanks to American Clay Enterprises, who have “bagged” a beautiful Santa Fe tradition. Plasters made from clay, sand, mica, and earth pigments are not only non-toxic, they enhance the indoor climateby balancing moisture and ionization; americanclay.com.—Paula Baker-Laporte, Baker-Laporte & Associates

Robin Gray. Her locally designed rugs made from natural fibers feature beautiful colors and amazing designs; robingray.net. High Country Gardens. Locally produced, with a mail order catalog of drought-tolerant plants; highcountrygardens.com. Hand painted tiles, especially by New Mexico artists like Alessandra Haines, Stacie Pope-Hein, Jill Rounds, Marie Baron, Yvonne Magner, and Elizabeth Hunt; available at Statements.—Pam Duncan, Wiseman & Gale & Duncan

VIDA Design. I love how Danae Falliers is exploring new interpretations of traditional regional design and craft. Her furniture is obviously modern, but also reads as steeped in tradition. The furniture is beautifully crafted and utilizes the skills of local artisans; vidadesignonline.com. Plaza Hardwood. Toni and Paul Fuge have understood the importance of responsibly harvested wood products for years. Not only do they carry incredibly beautiful salvaged wood planking, they have been supplying Santa Fe with FSC-certified sustainable wood for more than a decade; plzfloor.com. Crocker, Ltd. Ed Crocker and his staff are making a huge difference in regards to historic preservation, both locally and nationally. They have been at the forefront of a movement that carefully preserves the past while simultaneously embracing the future; crockerltd.net.—Trey Jordan, Trey Jordan Architecture

Outdoor Rooms. Santa Fe’s magnificent views and climate encourage outdoor living. Deep portals become outdoor rooms with the simple addition of fireplaces, barbeques, ceiling fans, and comfy furniture. Mass and Glass. Our traditional regional architecture has thick adobe walls with relatively small windows. With rastra and insulated concrete forms, newer homes can have both 18-inch walls and an extremely high R-value. By adding large windows and doors to frame the incredible vistas, you can open a home to the outdoors while creating an exciting design statement against a wall’s thick mass. Color. Up until five years ago, the majority of interior walls were finished with white diamond or structulite plaster. With the introduction of pigment into the clay body, we can experiment with an exciting palette of colors in Santa Fe homes.—Sharon Woods, Woods Architects-Builders

Babcock Construction. This family-owned business specializes in custom cabinets and doors for projects big or small. Give them an idea or motif, and they can create magic. Water systems by Chic Kelty. His company, Savio Engineering, is an industry leader in water systems, including pond-free waterfalls and streams using recirculated water. Plus, he’s a native New Mexican; savio.cc. Indigenous, green building techniques. When I moved here in 1970, I had the pleasure of working with such luminaries as John Gaw Meem, John McHugh, and Bill Lumpkins before opening my own architectural firm. Traditional Southwestern architectural styles—ones that use massing and simple yet elegant proportions—are perfectly suited here. Using adobe, water-based stains and paints, recycled lumber, and recycled antique doors means you can build something beautiful that’s also smart and treads lightly on building sites.—John Midyette, John Midyette Architecture

Innovative gray water re-use. Although capturing gray water for irrigation is becoming more common, re-using gray water for toilets is a ground breaking sustainable design. A home’s gray water is captured, treated with biogenerators and ozone, and then pumped back into a building for flushing the toilets, saving millions of gallons of potable city water. We’re installing Santa Fe’s first system in the Railyard’s Artyard project. Window glazing. The easiest way to achieve energy efficiency in a building is to minimize heat loss; especially through the windows. By varying the type of glazing on windows depending on their orientation, it’s possible to block out and let in more UV where needed. Architectural smoke and mirrors. At the Santa Fe Railyard, the master plan requires that buildings have a simple massing (i.e., they should look like metal warehouses). That doesn’t lend itself well to living space. The solution? Create everything you need for light and ventilation and architectural interest, and then hang a metal mesh along the perimeter of the building so that it appears as a more simple mass from the outside. The tenants still get the light and airflow they want, and the master planners get their wish, too.—Don Wiviott, The Lofts and WivCo