Architect's simple dream home in AZ's saguaro cactus forest
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 29 มี.ค. 2015
- When architect Michael P. Johnson prepared to design his wife’s dream home in the middle of a saguaro cactus forest outside of Phoenix, Arizona, his first thought was the desert. He first built a retaining wall so as only to disturb the earth directly beneath the home.
He then lifted the home to lighten the footprint and take advantage of the special views. To fully appreciate the saguaro cactus- they grow up to 70 feet tall and may live over 150 years- that surround their home, the walls are mostly window.
For temperature control, the north-facing wall is mostly buried into the mountain and has the least windows. The windows at the east and west have long eaves and sunshades. The south wall is all window and in the wintertime, the light hits the far wall and the cement acts as a heat sink to provide heating.
Johnson is a professor at Taliesin West and like the school's founder Frank Lloyd Wright, Johnson believes in organic architecture, that a home should be in harmony with its environment.
Michael P Johnson design studio: www.mpjstudio.com/
Original story: faircompanies.com/videos/view/... - แนวปฏิบัติและการใช้ชีวิต
I loved how he said how society is 25 years behind . No on is ahead of their time its the rest that is behind👌
You meet some very interesting people Kirsten. Great video once again. ;)
I loved it,just wonderful and although the main room was open plan they broke it up cleverly without walls but separated it with the book area,gorgeous,thankyou for allowing the pleasure of visiting this place
That is a beautiful place. I like what he said about the glass , how out of your peripheral vision you are always aware of what is beyond.
You captured the location perfectly, just like the builder did
Your films are marvelous ! You really craft the story in a way that draws me in every time
Live long & prosper.
Jerome Jakubiec he does look like a Vulcan
He sounds like Nimoy indeed.
What a beautiful desert home! I enjoy hearing the meaning behind the design, for example this design that focuses on a couples needs.
Kirsten, you have great vision. Something so Wonderful, Mystical and Breathtaking about the Arizona desert! The vision of having a home in the desert is much like this one. It needs too. Having rooms and doors is a crime to the surrounding land. It needs to be seen and lived in.
Every time I see the desert it calls me back...-Thanks Kirsten!
This guy is freaking awesome. I love his intellect and his matter of factness..oh..and the house is AMAZING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Love the way light filters through the house.
I love your videos, Kirsten. You bring out the essence and interesting in each video you do. You’re an amazing documentarian. Thank you so much for bringing all these interesting and diverse homes to us. PS I love how relaxed this family is with their dogs ;)
Thanks for sharing. I love the desert. Awesom home.
THAT IS NICE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I like! I think I found 80-90% of what my dream home is.
Fantastic... The wisdom of simplicity and The luxury of efficiency.
Wow what a beautiful home
I love your house ... It reminds me of the St.Thomas Public library in Ontario,Canada. I spent so many hours there, it was and still is my favourite place. That you included a library, makes this video extra special to me. Thank you so much for sharing.
Great video! Hopefully some day my architecture practice will lead me to out west warmer climate as well. Great job Michael I agree with you about making the project fit the site and surroundings!
Nice to see Mike again, I ised to walk thru the desert of New River to see his library when he lived outside of Shangrila
wonderful! good architecture and the well thought out reasoning behind it always makes me feel at ease. good work especially in the beautiful desert.
Magnificent home and such wonderful scenery.
What a beautiful thought out home. Love the library.
His point about Tuscan styled homes:
Personally, I think the idea with tuscan homes is to emphasise the outside space and try to draw people outside rather than just sitting inside all the time admiring the view. However, I do understand his point about making the most of the view through large windows.
4:55 imho, girl taking care of her little brother remains the cutest thing here
I love what he said about being a part of the time that we live in.
great story . great house . i love your style of reporting and presenting . you let the interviewee tell their story , but u do ask certain questions . thank you to both of u.
love the style, its got good flow.
Great video, would love to hear more from him. Couldn't agree more.
This man has great hair.
Lol
This was beautiful. Thank you.
Amazing! Thanks for the video!
Thank you, yes, another great video. This house is for free spirits!
Beautiful home.
this architect has good good questions to start with, after that he elaborated his house addressing the design with good answers
home my dream !)) nice video
Neato!😎Nicely done.
Loved the video and the house.
Kirsten Dirksen have been watching the videos u have been posting. It's such a beauty wonderful ideas marvellous structure totally obsessed with the videos
Very inspiring,beautiful and educative - I mean I learned a lot, just like I learned from frank lloyd wright and john lautner, didn't know he was going to refer to him doh, just sensed he was inspired by him too and as an Architect in training I believe what he said in the end is still True and the character of every real Architect.💯
Just awesome.
Thanks for sharing Kirsten.❤🙌
another great video !
A beautiful home
Reminds me of the house that gets blown up in the film Zabriskie Point
Love that film. I knew people involved in it's production.
Great house, great man!
Really nice
Architect Michael P. Johnson has a serious design portfolio.
what a great guy!
I'm not a big fan of the desert (it's too still and 2d for me) but this house and how it was built into nature is incredible. Another great vid :)
Very Good Job 👏
really nice
я хотел бы построить такой дом, где то у нас на родине...этот человек, своим рассказом взял за душу меня... Невероятно и в тоже время просто-деревянные балки, продольные и плперечные, колонны из железо-бетонна, стекло и шлако-блоки... природа...удивительно, как он или она додумались до такого.. гении ума и мысли. они смогли воплотить свою мечту в жизнь... уважение им и спасибо за такое творение. этот дом останется на всегда в моей памяти...
Muy bien.
Nice... 👍
I love the house and location. looks so secluded and homely ❤
Thank you so much for sharing this. Love his point of view on design.
Why does design need to fit a specific category, when we should design to fit the people who will interact with it.
totally dig this...
Wowie!!!!
Nice touch at 2:46, showing the drawing of Niemeyer's National Congress (Brazil) building.
So beautiful indeed. Poor wife if she is the one who has to clean the windows, though.
It is a nice plce.
i like it . I need watch like this more videos. So ......... you............it
May 2014 I was living in a 2700 sq.' 1.5 Mil, ocean view house, not a home.
I always enjoy your View into Home Spaces. I just returned from 130 days in AZ, my first winter there, this year in a cargo camper van, back N. of Spokane now building out a 400 sq. ' pole barn into a paid for Home BASE. It is much more than a house to me. Simply, life is better lived more Simplified.
I just received the book Michael P. Johnson The Unshakeable Search for Architecture and am using it to compose muzik influenced by his space-age desert designs. It is a great book and I would like to see even more photos of his buildings. Another fun highlight of this video is that at 1:54 if you look out the window you can see the Ellsworth residence that Michael designed as well. It is the long rectangular structure. At 0:30 his design studio is the colourful building behind him.
Cool 👍🏼
Es hermosa 😀
This is a smart guy.
Reminds me of the "Bridge House" by Amancio Williams.
I am Montagnard jarai indigenous I like how he said respect nature.
Это прекрасный дом!
What an interesting man :)
I've wanted to say something about this particular tiny house literally for years, ever since I first searched TH-cam for tiny houses and found this one. There are other structures Dirksen has filmed, but this is one of the two worst she's filmed, regarding injuries to wildlife due to environmental unawareness of an architect. I don't do social media, and couldnt find a way to write to Dirksen, and putting my comment here will teach more readers, anyway. I just hope that if anyone knows how to contact this architect, they'll ask him to read this. It's important.
He thought he was being so careful about minimizing his environmental footprint while building the house, trying to be so respectful of the cacti. But he's a very typical architect, totally unaware of his structure's real impact on wildlife. The long side of the house facing the camera is a huge battery of reflective glass. That's a death trap for birds and bats. If you think like a bird, not an architect, all you'll see is the reflection of the sky on that glass. A bird doesn't understand about glass or reflective surfaces, it would take millions of years to evolve and understand about windows and glass fascades... actually, never. So they hit the glass at full speed, thinking it's just sky to fly through, and get head injuries, internal injuries, broken legs and collarbones. As far as minimizing that unnecessary, totally avoidable damage, he also needs to know that decals or silhouettes of raptors stuck to the glass don't work, bushes are just something to fly through if you're a bird, plastic owls are a joke, and mobiles won't work, either. Nothing you hang inside the window will help... it has to be on the outside of all those windows, where the sky's reflection is.
I teach people that "you can either lick nature or join her," and that you're never going to lick her. That leaves joining her, which requires understanding of how birds perceive things so that you can work with them effectively. The only thing that will work is cutting off the reflection of the sky on all that glass, on the outside. He needs to measure the glass on the outside and go get some rolls of aluminum or fiberglass insect screening, and hang it over the outside surface of the windows, to reduce the reflection of the sky. You can use duct tape temporarily. The camera will always see the screening, but his eyes won't after a few minutes, and he'll still have his panoramic view. He owes it to the wildlife he claims to respect and love, to do this. He can even frame it out if he wants, to make it neater... the small distance between the screening and the glass might even then act like a trampoline, to soften the impact slightly. Nothing else will stop window strikes. I've been a full-time wildlife rehabilitator for 35 years, and I know what I'm talking about.
He's ignorant about his real environmental impact, and ignorance is educable. He's chosen a fragile ecosystem to build upon, but he didn't consider anything but the flora... not the fauna. He's my alone: most traditional architects are just like him, using lots of glass and other reflective materials without understanding the carnage they'll be causing. There's a multistory, black glass, monolithic building where I live that kills so many birds and bats that people have nicknamed it "the Darth Vader building." Secretaries find dying and dead animals on the sidewalk all the time.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. If you want to love, respect and thank nature for giving you peace and beauty while living in such a pristine environment, you need to become more aware, and protect all of it. My dream is that some day, avoiding such environmental impacts will be required reading for architecture school students. These birds can't adapt to glass, but humans can fix it. You're lucky to live in such a fragile place, and the way to express your gratitude is to protect all that wildlife you want to watch. Meanwhile, I'd strongly recommend you have some phone numbers of local wildlife rehabilitators on-hand, for when the inevitable injuries occur. Not if... when. It's a sure thing, the way those uncovered windows are now.
I can only hope, since this video has been posted for years, that some other rehabbers or environmentalists have already addressed this with him. If not... maybe he'll read mine. If it weren't so dangerous, I'd post my contact information here for him, but that isn't safe. I tried to find a way to email Dirksen privately, to get my info to him, but couldn't find a way to do it other than social media, which I don't do.
Thank you very much.
i know you posted this 3 month ago, but is there any technologies available to have both a lot of glass and get no reflection? I know there is opaque glass, but that removes the ability to see out the window. Is there anything that does not compromise a view, while removing the reflection for flying animals?
I live in a glass house in the woods. 1 bird has hit the windows in 6 years, and I have feeders and suet everywhere.
How true as being ahead of our time most countries are just behind.
He be a great house in very single day
Interesting house. The owner sounds like he's two days away from full-blown Emphysema though.
If i had the money where i don't need to work and worry about the bills, i would move to Arizona and buy a house like this in a desert without any indoor doors and live alone and all day just read books , cook, eat, sleep and meditate and repeat for rest of my life. :)
nice place...love windows..but too many here..lol. Even in New Mexico with land like this, Id rather have some smaller windows with curtains
I love it! In wondering how much it would cost for him to build me a home. :)
Wish I knew what the painting in the bedroom (@ 4:15) was.
The dog keeps popping up like it is about to say "welcome to my humble abode". 😂
It's a lovely home, in a beautiful setting, but I wouldn't want to have to clean all of that glass.
unfortunately i dont like the red in the kitchen, but this is just amazing i adore the space!! everything else is just spot on :)
He built the house for his wife and himself and not for others need.
That much is obvious. He built it for himself without regard to the wildlife around him. That was ignorance, not deliberate, I've addressed his errors in a new entry, above.
I was hoping to see at least one of the bathrooms. Overall, nice design.
that eames (i think it's called?) chair!
Without electricity, this house would create completely unlivable conditions. And I imagine his electricity bills are enormous from March through October. That's why you "should" have thick walls and small windows out here in the Sonoran Desert. But, this is his art, and I appreciate it quite a bit!
watcher8o Yeah, I'm surprised there isn't solar energy or any mention of multiple paned windows.
+QuickQuips You can see a pretty large looking solar array at 5:47
Ah, good catch!
It's a crime how little architectural inspiration, creativity, or utility seems to filter down to the mass market. The reasons are many, but we, and the environment, are poorer for it.
What part of Tucson is this house located.
He never mentioned Soleri. The influence is quite evident.
As is the presence of his bells.
More tight space interiors?
do you have a well and solar power ????
fascinating. Not for me, I can't imagine the hostility of that area, how much did he have to drill to get water? Where did he put his septic field? Wondering whose children those are.....nice to see that he reads. The hot pink was not my taste, would have preferred another color personally but the static between the low key and the neon pink was interesting. Just my thoughts.
I think the blonde girl is Kirsten's child.
another couple of thoughts. I didn't see electric lines, but he has appliances. How is electricity brought in? Does he do solar? He couldn't garden for food outside (obviously) to have some sustainability, you would have to make a greenhouse, of course water is an issue with that. You couldn't 'hide' in that house for long as you would starve to death. But as a 'prepper' that is my main concern, to be able to feed family, have some sustainability and protection from the wild animals (humans). lol
Tina Fisher The Arizona desert is not the sort of place people should be living. No water, no food, too much power to cool houses. When SHTF, those people will be among the first to go.
Al Mollitor
And if it hits the fan during a polar vortex, how will people in the Northeast urban centers survive? There will be people all over the country in serious trouble, whenever it happens.
true, but I'm more worried about the dollar collapsing, food being scarce and race wars then I am a natural disaster.
Quanto maior a casa mais solidao trasmite. Nada de izageiros. Dizani. Nao e um caichote. Grande sen armonia. Metria e arita. Armonia agapi
You are not in advance with your time, it is society that's late. :)
Was just wondering what if the theif or somebody sneak up breaking the glass is that safe enough??? Considering the fact that its in the middle of the forest.
I'm getting thirsty just watching this.
how much this house would have costed to build including the interiors ..... any guesses ?
Hi house is nice, but your video is need a lot light, I think you turn on all lights for this video
The dog....
they should try sunpanels :)
Jeremias Macias You can see them towards the end of the video, in the roof (8:05).
The Dessert. No shade, no running water, no trees, no SEA...
Your vids capture homes the best Kirsten. Dwell should take a lesson from your videos.
IDK... kind ho hum home...