Avra Verde

Seven Exlusive Desert Pavilions on Forty Acres.

project promotes an indoor-outdoor lifestyle merging sensory experience, artisanship, and environment sensibility to create the most unique private residence enclave in the American Southwest.

Main Ideas: landscape, minimalism, modernism, residential, steel structure

_A Perfect Precedent.... in Arizona (?)

"He's not well-known on the East Coast -- so far all of his buildings with one or two exceptions have been built in the Southwestern desert --
One of the interesting things about Joy is that he talks about minimalist visual artists providing a sourcebook of images and ideas for his work, not minimalist architects.

"It's not about trying to be minimal," Joy said. "It's about trying to allow a sensory tuning-in to occur."

In a design for an Aman Resorts property in southern Utah, Joy (and two collaborators) have designed a spa that is cribbed from James Turrell. Joy uses sheets of steel in a Serra-esque way: the viewer is aware that it's steel but it's somehow softer and more inviting than steel should be. When Joy builds a wall out of white drywall tilted up against a rammed-earth structural wall, it's easy to see some McCracken in the idea.

Joy even sounds like a minimalist artist. He talked about his respect for materials, about rammed earth as being spiritual stuff, about loving the "honesty, integrity, and completeness" of his materials.

Perhaps because of his love for the desert, Joy treats the desert itself as one of his materials. (The rammed earth he uses comes from an Arizona company, so, in a sense, the desert is one of his materials.) Joy talked about how as he wanted visitors to his buildings to smell the sage of the desert on their way into the house. In the bedroom of one home, Joy built a little window on the floor so that the clients could open it and smell the star jasmine outside.

The interiors of Joy's buildings, mostly homes, are visually minimal in the extreme, but are also sensually vibrant. Joy proudly showed off one project where, when you enter it, the ground crunches under your feet, water from a fountain fills your ears and the smell of daffodills wafts over you. Stairs are built to sound like distant bells as you walk on them. Cutouts in walls frame mountain views. (Joy's work is thoroughly informed by Mies, from the cutouts to the use of glass.)

Joy's buildings are designed to be visually neutral, even invisible. (He describes them as duckblinds in the desert.) At the NBM he talked about how he wanted his buildings to be so inocuous that they have the same profile as desert shadows. I noticed that none of the buildings he showed in his slide show were higher than the surrounding saguaro cactus. Detail is everything. Joy is so proud of his attention to detail that he took great pride in showing off a bathroom exhaust fan he'd designed. "
//http://www.artsjournal.com/man/2004/02/rick_joy_the_national_building.html

Client Ideas

Based on Richard Serra

My client is a large scale sculptor who lives with his wife. He has no children. He has residences in New York City and Nova Scotia so he enjoys cold weather but is looking for another home, a small getaway. It should be close enough to a lively city, where he can be inspired by human interaction, but should also be in a quiet area where he will have time for contemplation.

This artist creates large scale, public art sculpture because he believes that in art “the content is the ‘viewer.’” However he truly believes that art is not about looking but is about experience. In other words the viewer should not just be a viewer. He likes physical and experiential engagement with his art. His art can be considered minimalist.

The artist is most inspired by dancers and theatrical productions because that is where he learns most about space and physical interactions between people, objects, and the natural world. Access to live performance is essential.

He needs a large studio but this home will not be for his monumental fabrications. It will be for experimenting at a “smaller” but still human scale.