A 10,431-square-foot residence on a 1.4-acre hilltop within Tucson's most exclusive gated community — composed in distinct pavilions, framed by water and fire, and oriented to the long shadow of the Catalinas.
At twelve million dollars and ten thousand square feet, set within the gated Canyon Ranch community, the residence brings an international design vocabulary to the Sonoran Desert — a collaboration between G & M Design of Monaco and Bart Reines of Miami, completed in 2014 to commercial masonry standards.
Composed in distinct pavilions arranged around water and fire — and around a quiet conceit: there is, intentionally, no clear path to the main entry. The architecture asks the visitor to slow down, to wander among the saguaros and golden barrels, to find their way. By the time you arrive at the door, the desert has done its introductions.
“Intentionally, there is no clear path
to the main entry.”
A residence at this scale — ten thousand square feet, four pavilions, water and fire arranged with the patience of a garden — does not ask to be photographed quickly. We came back three separate days to do this one properly: working with the light in each room and across the exterior, returning when the hour was right, until every space had been given the time it asked for.
It's not often that one location requires every trick I've learned over the last twenty years of photography, but this one did. Working with the amount of windows and natural light in a way that best represented the space was an enjoyable challenge, and one I'll remember for a while.
What G & M Design and Bart Reines built here is, in the end, less a residence than a sequence — of rooms, of vistas, of fire and water staged across the day. We made our work in the same key: a record, plainly given, of a place composed to be received slowly.
Concrete masonry, polished stone, art glass, and the desert — held in pavilions oriented to fire, water, and the long western light.
The decisions that shaped this work — how we read light at this scale, why we came back three separate days — are the kind of thing we write about in the journal.
Notes from behind the camera →Shadowpoint considers a limited number of new engagements each year. Every inquiry is read personally by the studio, and we respond within two working days.
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