Three Poems in the Desert: Brent Kendle

There are times when you feel that an architect or designer is just waiting for a certain client, collaboration, or project to allow him or her suddenly to burst forth into our collective imagination with a creation of stunning audacity, beauty, or both. Brent Kendle of Kendle Design Collaborative (KDC) is one of those architects. His genius is attracting national attention, largely due to a recent series of commercial and residential projects in the Scottsdale/Phoenix area. These award-winning projects are in counterpoint to, yet harmonize with, their surrounding desert landscapes. Kendle is creating American classics that are bound to set new directions in architecture and expand the possibilities of eco-conscious design.

This issue of Diisynology features three of Kendle’s newest projects: a just-completed residence called Monk’s Shadow Residence and two projects for which he is best known — Desert Wing Residence and the Camelback Village Racquet and Health Club.

When Kendle designs houses, he makes them intimate, functional, and inspiring. His commercial spaces are welcoming and provide a sense of community. Whether residential or commercial, Kendle’s designs reflect his commitment to collaboration — with his clients, his design team, the community, and the land. His buildings embrace, rather than do battle with, challenging environments, and they offer a sense of communion with nature. Massive walls resonate with sandstone outcroppings. Roofs and glass walls appear to float magically above the landscape. His structures converse not only with people, but with the earth and the sky, with light and with air.

MONK’S SHADOW
Monk’s Shadow is a unique Maricopa County residence built on a steep, narrow site in the Sonoran Desert. It offers magnificent views of Camelback Mountain and the iconic “praying monk” geological formation for which the house is named. The owners lived for many years on the property before commissioning Kendle to build the house, and Praying Monk became a familiar and cherished facet of their daily lives that they wanted to incorporate into their new digs.

Monk’s Shadow comprises a series of levels that climb up a steep hillside. The levels allow the house to be zoned into self-contained areas for different functions. There is a main zone for family living space and entertaining, another zone for the master bedroom and parents’ space, a zone for the teenage children, and a zone for guests. The living areas stair-step up the narrow site so that each of the independently functioning zones has light, air, and, of course, views and more views — not only of Camelback Mountain and Praying Monk, but also the city lights of Phoenix below. Monk’s Shadow affords such vistas thanks to generous expanses of glass that wrap around a hidden garden and open up onto rooftop decks. In contrast, the entry side of the house has relatively few windows, which protects the owners’ cherished privacy.

The layout of Monk’s Shadow takes full advantage of the area’s high desert micro-climate. When the temperature drops at the top of the mountain on late summer evenings, cooling breezes travel down the hillside toward the house, which “breathes” in the natural air currents via the hidden garden and draws the cool air inside. Mountain ridges block the house from the late afternoon sun and provide year-round climate control for the outdoor pool area, which was sited to make the most of seasonal sun and shade.

The interiors, designed in-house by Kendle Design Collaborative, feature custom mill work and built-in furniture. Finishes display a minimal pallet on the concrete floors, western red cedar tongue-and-groove ceilings, mahogany mill work, and granite. As with many of Kendle’s residential designs, the interior spaces of Monk’s Shadow blend with and bring in the outdoors by using floor-to-ceiling glass walls, while separate outdoor “rooms” fit neatly under extended roof overhangs, on roof decks, and around the pool.

Lower-level rooftops serve as outdoor living areas, seamlessly extending the interior spaces. Upper-level roof lines curve gently to create one of Kendle’s signature double-wing-shaped roofs.

“Like many of my projects, the roof is designed to form a simple pavilion, sheltering the interior and exterior spaces below and providing those spaces the freedom to take on whatever shape their function dictates without interruption from columns and supporting walls,” Kendle explains. “The form of the roof is a direct response to the views, raising up to capture the view up the mountain and reaching out to carry the eye out to the valley views to the north. The butterfly shape also acts to direct precious rainwater to the surrounding xeriscape landscaping.”

Click here for additional details about Monk’s Shadow in the architect’s own words.

DESERT WING Residence
Desert Wing Residence is not merely a home. It is a poem in the desert. The award-winning design speaks to and about its location, breaking down the boundaries between indoors and out and allowing its occupants full engagement with the unique desert landscape and the ever-changing sky. Eschewing the constraints of style, Kendle and his collaborator, interior designer Jack Wozniak, harnessed elements of nature and climactic forces in their design for Desert Wing. Planar roof forms fold to catch rainwater and disperse it to surrounding vegetation. Solid walls of earth and concrete block out the harsh desert sun and surrounding structures. Elsewhere, an almost invisible line of glass shaded by deep overhangs offers unimpeded views of nature and the sparkling city lights of Scottsdale.

Desert Wing was truly a collaborative effort between Kendle, Wozniak, and their clients. Wozniak, who has designed three homes for the owners and now counts them among his friends, said they selected Kendle Design Collaborative for the project because “from the beginning, Brent was very open to collaboration.” The clients supplied a large wish list and then left it up to Wozniak and Kendle to design the floor plan. “Brent would do the layouts and then we would discuss it together,” he said. “As I knew the clients so well, I was able to adjust the design to better fit their lifestyle.”

Desert Wing is really two homes in one: one area is for the exclusive use of the owners while a separate, self-contained area provides privacy for their frequent house guests. The minimal furnishings incorporate pieces from the owners’ previous home, including their living room furniture, made “fresh” with a new heavy twist wool carpet that adds a sense of warmth to the concrete floors. Wozniak noted that he always tries to keep to a contemporary look that is still classic so that the design does not become dated over time.

In choosing construction materials for Desert Wing, Wozniak and Kendle looked not only at the inherent beauty and low maintenance, but for indigenous qualities as well. Copper mined in the Arizona desert clads bold roof forms that appear to float above indoor and outdoor living spaces. Rammed earth walls made of soil excavated from the site rise up from the desert floor, echoing the shape of the surrounding mountain range. This truly is a home in harmony with its location and expressive of its unique place in the world.

For the interior, the designers found a studio to make custom glass wall tiles with a silver-metallic leaf on the back, imparting a warm silver finish that is durable as well as elegant. They gave careful consideration to the colorants in the cast concrete floors and the stain for the wood ceilings to harmonize with the earthen walls.

Kendle and Wozniak said they were inspired by a “tremendous” site and clients with a contemporary minimalist vision and respect for the natural environment. They came up with a design that offers privacy while still having nature at the doorstep.

Desert Wing’s outdoor spaces were a joint effort of Kendle Design Collaborative and JJR/Floor Associates of Phoenix, which is nationally recognized for innovative landscape architecture. Their design features multiple fireplaces and swimming pools, including a pool that wraps around the house. The wrap-around pool is not merely a convenience, but, as with the hidden garden in Monk’s Shadow, it provides natural air conditioning by cooling the desert breezes as they are drawn into the house.

Desert Wing Residence took the grand prize at the 2008 Gold Nugget Awards, which recognize excellence in the building industry. The awards are announced at an annual home-building trade show in San Francisco sponsored by the PCBC (Pacific Coast Builders Conference) — a community of builders and manufacturers, building scientists and architects, environmental engineers, and landscape companies working together to advance community building. The judges cited Desert Wing as an example of what “site-sensitive architecture can and should look like.”

CAMELBACK VILLAGE RACQUET AND HEALTH CLUB
The owners of Camelback Village Racquet and Health Club asked Kendle Design Collaborative KDC to remodel their facilities with a signature KDC building that highlights views of Camelback Mountain. Working with architects from City Spaces and interior designers from FoRM Design Studio, both Phoenix-based firms, and landscape architects from GBTwo Landscape Architecture, Inc., of Scottsdale, KDC gave its clients all they asked for — and more.

The collaborative breathed new life into the club by tying two existing buildings together with a new entryway and a statement roof line. It transformed a popular community health club into a stunning local landmark featuring many of Kendle’s signature elements – a floating pavilion roof, grounding walls, strong geometric forms, and wide expanses of glass that render almost invisible the separation between indoors and out. KDC designed a new, contemporary addition housing fitness studios, a wellness center, and offices. The addition links to an existing restaurant to create a multifunctional complex.

The new entrance features a semicircular courtyard with a muscular colonnade and a roof that swoops up like a gull-winged proscenium. Together they create a subtle sense of excitement and movement, the latter enhanced as the colonnade continues along the side of the building, forming an enclosure for the stadium tennis court and outdoor entertainment areas.

Inside, a light, airy lobby extends the length of the building. Like an interior “street,” it allows for easy access to the various rooms and services of the new complex. A clerestory band of glass shows off the roof line and allows for ample daylight, minimizing the need for electric lighting and providing a sense of grandeur to the space. It also helps visitors orient themselves to the layout of the interior and to its style, which features earthy finishes such as stone tile floors and warm desert hues on the walls.

Kendle is a member of the American Institute of Architects and is a LEED- (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) accredited professional.

Photography Credits:
All photography by Rick Brazil Architectural Photography, except as follows:
Bill Timmerman Photography: Camelback Village Racquet and Health Club
Boom with a View: Arial photographs of Monk’s Shadow Residence

For more information about the designers please use the contact information below:
Kendle Design Collaborative
480.951.8558
kendledesign.com
Jack Wozniak
Wozniak Interior Design
760.322.0215
Rick Brazil
Brazil Design Group
Architectural Photography
602.361.6168
brazildesigngroup.com
Boom with a View
602.908.4454
boomwithaview.com
Bill Timmerman Photography
602.420.9325
billtimmerman.com

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