Red Rock by Faulkner Architects

Faulkner Architects skilfully blends desert terrain with urban luxury to create a robust family home that embraces contrasts while offering effortless indoor and outdoor living.

Embedded in the Las Vegas Valley, between the glowing lights of the Las Vegas Strip and the arid beauty of Red Rock Canyon, a family home offers respite from the harsh desert climate. It’s here, with a raw materiality, that Faulkner Architects has crafted Red Rock as a building designed to embrace the challenging landscape for the experience of living within it.

“The architecture represents a contextual conversation between the desert landscape and the city,” explains Greg Faulkner of Faulkner Architects, adding that the project brief requested a home that “characterised a climate-responsive architecture”.

“The architecture represents a contextual conversation between the desert landscape and the city,” explains Greg Faulkner of Faulkner Architects, adding that the project brief requested a home that “characterised a climate-responsive architecture”. The particular climate of the Red Rock site is defined by diverse extremes; cold, dry winters are juxtaposed with harsh, hot summers. Strong winds and monsoons add to the challenge of habitation, and to place a family home required a robust strategy for integrating weather protection measures without compromising the quality of spaces connected physically and visually to the land.

Faulkner describes the occupational requirements of Red Rock as a series of adaptable living spaces capable of expansion and contraction to accommodate the client’s extended family over long periods. In addition to the spatial performance, it was critical that the home was integrated with the landscape by way of meaningful visual connectivity and material treatments reminiscent of the varied tones and textures of the desert context. “The built form represents a conceptual search for an experience-driven built environment that repeats the behaviour of the desert,” asserts Faulkner, referencing a design narrative that has resulted in a building seemingly carved from a single solid mass.

Faulkner describes the occupational requirements of Red Rock as a series of adaptable living spaces capable of expansion and contraction to accommodate the client’s extended family over long periods.

On approach, the building presents as a staunch, immovable object composed of several large volumes. With an unexpected gentleness, a metal box rests atop a heavy concrete podium. Faulkner describes this simple palette of core materials as “a repetition of the layered iron ore found in the geology of the Las Vegas Valley and Red Rock Canyon”. Locally sourced aggregates, sands and gravels are used for the ground-floor concrete walls, which, alongside the various hues of the upper-level steel cladding, maintain a tonal relationship to the surrounding mountains. The arrival experience of Red Rock is as understated as the material application; from the entry, a narrow aperture is carved into the concrete to denote access to the concealed interior. Alongside this opening, a large basin of water is strategically placed at eye level to reflect the distant view of the city profile from within – a subtle gesture intended as a commentary on the ephemeral nature of the built landscape.

The program of Red Rock is split over three levels, the cumulative area of which is half buried in the earth. On the ground level, a prolonged entry sequence is achieved through a journey along an enclosed passage with a gradual incline to a small courtyard. This second threshold moment is contained within a void open to the sky above and populated with verdant native planting. Beyond the arrival, the occupation of the home consists of generous living spaces structured around another larger courtyard where the interior can open up and blur the boundary between indoors and outdoors.

On approach, the building presents as a staunch, immovable object composed of several large volumes.

The east-oriented exterior space is conceived as the result of a subtractive process of design, which leaves a semi-enclosed courtyard protected from roaring southerly and westerly winds. The abundance of space created by the outdoor terrace accommodated the opportunity for an elevated pool, mirroring the dimensions of the primary living space. To the west, steps lead down to a planted terrace, with room for outdoor lounging and dining. When long lines of glass doors are retracted into pockets within the concrete structure, all interior and exterior spaces flow seamlessly into one another, creating a permeable environment underpinned by the sense of living with the landscape.

Contained within the elongated metal box of the upper storey, bedrooms are oriented along an east-west axis and afford privacy by way of perforated metal screens. This second level creates an exterior terrace raised above the main body of the building and additionally contributes to shielding the pool area from the unforgiving sun and intense winds. From this cantilevered vantage point, views to the city and Red Rock Canyon are curated within a building volume that counterbalances the sculptural mass of the courtyard below.

The program of Red Rock is split over three levels, the cumulative area of which is half buried in the earth.

Beneath the pool, submerged openings in the structure introduce natural light to the below-ground entertainment spaces, imbued with the glowing blue of the water above. The courtyard pool also contributes to a sustainable design ethos, serving the dual purpose of passive cooling in the summer months. The selection of desert planting reinforced the responsible design approach and contributed to the strategy of frugal water consumption and regenerative site repair. “Careful observation of the surrounding native desert and locally available, low-water-usage vegetation drove plant selections by Entorno Arquitectura de Paisaje, the landscape architect firm from Mexico City,” says Faulkner.

Faulkner reflects on the success of the design vision for Red Rock, articulated by the client’s anecdotal experience of the dynamic use of the building’s spaces. The performance of the home is perhaps best characterised by the challenge of adverse weather during a large family gathering, wherein the use of outdoor spaces to the west was compromised. “The terrace was relatively calm, on the leeward side of the form,” he says of the east-oriented courtyard. “The gathering went on within the embrace of a storm.”

Architecture by Faulkner Architects. Interior design by CLL . Concept Lighting Lab. Build by R.W. Bugbee & Associates. Landscape design by Entorno Arquitectura de Paisaje.