In 1945, the American painter Georgia O’Keeffe purchased an old Spanish colonial residence and set to work on its restoration with the help of a friend. The renovation of the house, located in Abiquiu, New Mexico, would be completed around 1950, and featured a patio that had a wall with a door.
It’s this wall, with its door, in the patio that O’Keeffe would paint plenty of through the years 1946 to 1956, resulting in more than 20 works for the series.
A little more than half a century later, the triangular shadows, rectangular openings, and strips of desert sand have become creative prompts for the husband-and-wife team of Arizona-based architecture firm The Ranch Mine, who took inspiration from O’Keeffe’s patio paintings in their design of a desert property in Phoenix.
On the site of a former parking lot, the 9,746sqft project space features two courtyards, a swimming pool for cooling down in the daytime desert heat and an outdoor fireplace for warmth on cold nights. Like in O’Keeffe’s paintings, the house’s structure is designed to facilitate the shifting visual interest created by the sun, the sky, and their shadows.
The U-shaped floor-plan of the home is fronted by a semi-public courtyard with desert plantings and stucco walls, designed to soften the transition from the public street to the private abode. The entry features a woven wood ceiling from the homeowners’ own lumber mills.
In the private courtyard is a swimming pool, a steel-clad outdoor fireplace, an outdoor kitchen and custom-steel planters.
Inside, marble counters and a custom steel hood furnish the kitchen – which also opens to the private courtyard – along with white oak cabinetry, which continues throughout the rest of the home.
And then you get to the bathroom, a luxurious enclave clad with marble, featuring a walk-in shower and a copper tub that can be enjoyed in one’s privacy – or as an outdoor treat, thanks to a pivoting door custom-built by Identity Construction.
Look further inside this gorgeous desert home designed by The Ranch Mine, inspired by Georgia O’Keeffe’s works.
