Santa Fe Lightroom

Home to an architect and a publisher of art books, this Santa Fe residence is a structure built of stucco and glass, its interiors shot through with the dry light of the desert. Designed by the architect as part of a series of neighboring Pueblo-style dwellings, the tan treatment of the exterior gives way to the soft white gypsum of the interior walls. 

A Saarinen Side Table and a Barcelona Chair in the Santa Fe residence. Photograph by Morgan Rachel Levy.

The living room of the home builds on the restrained palette of the house. While floor-to-ceiling windows create a radiant spot for quiet reading, the central fireplace tempers the chill of evening breeze, and a painting by Ellsworth Kelly adds a spot of color to an otherwise monochrome space.

Scattered around the room are works published by the owner and his publishing firm, cloth-bound monographs by photographers and artists such as Georgia O’Keeffe, Félix González-Torres, and John Gossage. A pair of Saarinen Side Tables are used to stack fragments of this extensive personal library, their white laminate surfaces dissolving into the natural light.

Saarinen Side Tables and Barcelona Chairs in front of the living room fireplace. Photograph by Morgan Rachel Levy.

Completing the pristine composition of the room, a pair of Barcelona Chairs in white leather upholstery face each other in front of the fireplace. Originally designed by architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe for the German Pavilion at the 1929 International Exposition in Barcelona, the furniture has since been uprooted and adapted from its Bauhaus origins. Nevertheless, the classic lounge chairs sing the same song as the adobe-modern dwelling, and in their shared message of material and structural honesty, they find new homes in the desert.