Glazing at this concrete Santa Fe home by American studio Specht Architects offers expansive views of distant mountains, while casting shadow patterns across interior walls.
The Sundial House is situated on landscape characteristic of northern New Mexico towns ? undulating, arid terrain reaching toward nearby mountains.

To comply with the region's height restrictions for buildings, the architects built the home on a sunken plane. From the road, a slabbed walkway leads past a terrace and down a staircase to a courtyard entry.
Both levelled areas have gardens that spread up to the facade's western limit. Shrubs planted in the higher terrace balance the tall trees rising above from the lower enclosure.

The ash-coloured soil filling both plots strengthens the continuity between the gardens, and creates a smooth transition to the light grey of the home's exterior. The structure itself is built around two perpendicular, board-marked concrete walls on the recessed plane. Through the intersection, Specht Architects aimed to better connect the home with the surrounding scenery.

"This ridge-top house in Santa Fe is organised around a pair of perpendicular concrete walls that orient the house toward specific views," said the firm, which has offices in Austin and New York.
The longer partition extends from the north to the south, defining the limit of the lower vestibule and cutting through part of the raised terrace.

The east-west wall makes up the entry facade. ...