Desert Townhomes

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2018

Marfa, TX

Multi-Unit Residential

Competition Entry Completed

Mohamed Sharif, Felix Monasakanian, Victoria McKenna, Kyra Bauman, Michael Durán, Sam Tanis
David Bergman(Proforma)
Russell Fortmeyer/ARUP (Sustainability)

Project Description

Desert Townhomes encompasses two terraces, each of six adjoining townhouses flanking a narrow mews-like Paseo or walk-street, each with patios facing and animating thresholds between public and private realms.

The building forms and profiles echo the architectural character of Marfa’s downtown core as well as the stoic, site-specific sculpture at the Chinati Foundation. The buildings' precise, straightforward, and prismatic physique and bounded spaces rhyme with the grain of desert town and its industrial vernaculars.

This proposal is compact in footprint, sensible in siting and orientation and morphologically suited to community building and the consequential sense of sharing and collective stewardship.

For passive cooling: southern frontage is minimized and shaded while eastern frontage is shaded and roofs and western frontages are light in color to reflect the sun. Cross ventilation is factored into the project by means of integral operable skylights, and well postured doors and windows.

For passive heating: thick concrete walls retain low winter sun to release heat in the evenings; and well insulated walls and roofs and dual glazed windows and doors minimize heat loss.