AIA Western Mountain Region
1998 Design Award
AIA Merit Award

The Fondell / Picascia house, built of cast pumice-crete, is located on five acres in the vast rangeland of the Galisteo Basin and is surrounded by uninterrupted views of mountains, distant hills and an escarpment of rocky ledges. The primary design intent was to create a form for the house, office and garage that recalls the old farmstead compounds of Northern New Mexico and Spain while exploring contemporary architectural expression. This approach allowed the house to harmoniously integrate with the expansive grassland landscape and turn inward to the protected lawn and gardens within the compound. The composition of three pitched roofs, each with a gable at one end and a hip at the other, establishes the feeling of multiple structures within a walled compound while providing strong clean repetitive architectural elements. The gable/hip form mimics the nearby historic Galisteo Church. The combination of flat and pitched-roofed elements in a single structure evokes the old New Mexican villages that were built on the Spanish model of contiguous buildings along a street or around a plaza. The large "zaguan style" wooden entry, borrowed from early New Mexican courtyard buildings, reinforces the idea of a traditional rural structure while responding to the clients’ concern for security and privacy.