Architecture
in its element.
We design homes that belong
to the land they rise from.
- Site
- 33.8734°N 116.3014°W
- Elevation
- 2,727 ft
- Orientation
- 14° E of S
- Local
- — PT
The commission
A house is
an argument
with a place.
Solara builds in one landscape and has done since 1998. The desert settles nothing: it is nine hundred feet of gravel fan, forty degrees of daily swing and light so direct it will bleach a room to nothing by ten in the morning. Every house we draw is an answer to those three facts before it is an answer to a brief.
So the roof comes first and it comes out a long way — far enough to hold the whole south glass in shade through summer, shallow enough to let the winter sun reach the back wall. The stone is quarried within sixty miles. The bronze is left to go on moving. Nothing is asked to look new in ten years.
Read the approach- Practice
- Est. 1998, Joshua Tree
- Built
- 41 residences
- Typical span
- 26–34 months
- Structure
- Post-tensioned slab, steel frame
- Envelope
- Local stone, bronze, low-iron glass
- Performance
- Net positive, all five
Material
Material.
Light. Time.
Three materials, chosen for how they age rather than
for how they photograph on the day of handover.
- 01
Quarried stone
Coarse-split, 60 mi - 02
Bronze
Unlacquered, left to move - 03
Low-iron glass
Triple, 12 mm cavity
- 01
- Soffit — oiled cedar, 140 mm
- 02
- Oversail — 9 ft, south elevation
- 03
- Concealed gutter in the fascia
Rooted
Rooted in
this place.
Every wall is set out from the land
before it is set out on paper.
Built work
Five houses,
one landscape.
-
01Joshua Tree
2021 -
02Paradise Valley
2022 -
03Malibu
2023 -
04Palm Springs
2024 -
05Arcadia
2025
2021
$3.85M
4 bd · 4.5 ba · 3,024 sq ft
Night
A place to
belong.
Forty degrees of daily swing, and the stone gives it back
all night. The house is warmest at three in the morning.
Enquiries
Tell us about
the land.
We take three commissions a year. Send the parcel, the aspect and what you want the mornings to feel like — everything after that is a conversation.
studio@solara.example