High and dry: Rick Joy is perhaps set to become the Murcutt of the northern hemisphere with houses that are sharply honed to respond to hot and dry desert climates.

In the house Rick joy designed in a small valley in the Sonoran Desert near Tucson, he used his well-tried arid-climate repertoire of materials (other essays in the genre can be seen in for instance AR November 1998 and AR July 2001). Massive rammed earth walls often 2ft (600mm) thick provide insulation and thermal capacity to combat a climate that can be both very hot during the day and pretty cold at night. In contrast, large sheets of glass allow wonderful vistas of the desert, which is allowed to come right up to the outer walls with its strangely prolific and often zoomorphically shaped flora. Car parking is carefully hidden in the bush and the house is approached through the cacti along a simple path aligned axially with the main thrust of the plan.

A butterfly roof finished in rusted steel unites all elements of the house. The roof valley divides the plan into two strips, with the elements of the house proper to the south, and the main entrance, guest bedroom porch and terrace in the northern strip. A massive rammed earth fireplace offers hearths to porch and living area, and becomes the physical and psychological link between the two strips. Both porch and living room open to the desert slightly north of east. The massive earth walls are pierced to frame other views treasured by the owners.

In the bright desert sunlight, the whole place acts as a giant internalized sundial, with light slowly moving over the polished concrete floors and the wonderfully richly textured earth walls. In these, daywork joints are revealed by changes in texture and colour but there is an overall order made by the regular horizontal striations of the boarded shuttering which turned stiff mud into regular strata. The architect's own construction company (now highly experienced in rammed earth) was the main contractor.

In contrast to the delicate textures of the heavy walls, the glass planes are a little crude. Though sheets are large, the standard aluminium frames are clumsy compared to the semi-hand-crafted earth.

But the overall feeling of the spaces is calm and gentle. The apparently simple device of the butterfly roof affords much subtle gradation of space: for instance the areas round the fireplaces are the lowest and most intimate, while the tall south north and south windows draw the landscape into the house. As Juhani Pallasmaa has pointed out, Joy's houses in the northern hemisphere 'bring to mind some of the clearheaded and poetic house designs of Glenn Murcutt in Australia'. * In this house, the poetry lies in sensitivity to nature, and in the essence of materials, making a place that evokes simultaneously the archetypes of both tent and cave.

* Rick joy, Desert Works, Princeton Architectural Press, New York, 2002, p 16.

RELATED ARTICLE: Architect Rick joy Architects

Project team Rick Joy, Andy Tinucci

Photographs Bill Timmerman