Project: Red Rock House
Architecture: Faulkner Architects
Principal Architect: Gregory Faulkner
Team: Owen Wright, Jenna Shropshire, Breanne Penrod
General Contractor : RW Bugbee & Associates
Structural: CFBR Structural Group
Interior Designer: Concept Lighting Lab
Landscape Architects: Hugo Sanchez Paisaje and Vangson Consulting
Location: Las Vegas, Nevada, United States
Year: 2023
Photo Credits: Joe Fletcher
Glittering city lights to the east, serrated canyon walls to the west, and a fiery climate—bitter winds, parched winters, and punishing, sun-battered summers—envelop the Red Rock House by Faulkner Architects. This three-quarter-acre site, poised between the shimmering allure of the Las Vegas Strip and the rugged quietude of Red Rock Canyon, demanded a form that could endure with dignified subtlety. In response, the architects carved and sculpted, subtracting mass rather than adding frills. The result: a fortress-like retreat that breathes with the desert’s rhythms, whispering stories of protection, privacy, and perseverance into the scorching, sand-laden air.
Subtractive Gesture and Elemental Echoes
The house manifests as a subdued monument of buff-hued concrete, its finish born of local sand, gravel, and fly ash. This muted palette, borrowed from the very earth it stands upon, resonates with distant mountains. Rather than imposing itself, it recedes—an earthen sentinel shaped by wind and sun, as though eroded over eons.
A hidden courtyard emerges from a process of sculptural subtraction. By cleaving space from solid mass, the architects fashioned a tranquil nook protected from relentless gusts. Elevated above this niche lies a reflecting pool, its glassy surface mirroring both the living areas and the faint silhouettes of urban high-rises. It’s a surreal interplay: the mirage of city life drifting on a thin veil of water, both worlds fleeting and fragile, as if conjured from desert haze.
Entering the Underbelly of Light and Shade
Entry is gained through a narrow opening in the concrete bulk, guiding you, eye-to-water-level, into a shaded corridor that slowly ramps upward. Here, space grows supple and vertical. As you ascend, shafts of light and soft breezes slip through strategic apertures, enlivening an open-air court studded with hardy native flora. Below the desert’s harsh surface, more than half of the home’s volume lies buried. Subterranean spaces bask in coolness, the architecture quietly orchestrating thermal equilibrium as sunlight and ventilation descend through cunningly placed cutouts. Some lie even beneath the water’s line, filtering a dim, aquatic luminosity into rooms that feel both primeval and serene.
Sustainability finds a natural partner in this mass-heavy habitat. A reflective roof, a robust 45 kW photovoltaic array, and high-efficiency glazing, mechanical, and lighting systems stand guard against environmental excesses. This is a home that neither challenges nor capitulates to the desert; it coexists, poised in a careful détente.
Veils of Metal, Frames of View
Above, sleeping quarters float behind perforated sheets of weathering steel, a protective carapace that filters the relentless desert sun and muffles the whip of the wind. Oriented along the east/west axis, these upper volumes elongate the home’s horizontal tension, sheltering the pool, negotiating the glare, and welcoming the crimson twilight that heralds the canyon’s dusk.
A shaded deck extends to the south, its perforated mesh screens dancing with light and shadow, offering reprieve. The home’s firmament, exposed to both canyon and cityscape, treads a remarkable tightrope: on one end, it beholds the raw Western horizon; on the other, it nods to an urban glow that shimmers like a distant mirage.
Red Rock House is a sculpture in dialogue with its surroundings—a tacit acknowledgment that the desert grants no free passes. Here, architecture and environment fuse into a kind of equilibrium: the mass of concrete and steel, the careful harnessing of wind and sun, the silent acknowledgment of a harsh yet magnificent landscape. In its stillness and resilience, it whispers that comfort need not be loud or excessive, only honest and deeply, quietly attuned.
