Constructing Arizona: Embracing an Architecture of Place in the Sonoran Desert

Constructing Arizona is the first book to comprehensively present the architecture of the Sonoran Desert region of Arizona, balancing a breadth of projects with a depth of analysis. Building on over fifty interviews with noted members of the architecture community in Arizona and critical first-hand analysis of their built work, this book reveals the inherent principles, vocabulary, and influences of the regional architecture while also tying its contemporary makeup to a lineage of constructing in the Sonoran Desert.Schwartz argues that the best work of this region is not united by a stylistic or intellectual construct, but, instead, through the architects’ development of a variety of relationships between architecture and place.As such, the analysis provided is organized into thematic chapters, each focused on understanding these relationships to the primary characteristics of place: light, heat, water, ground, air, flora and fauna, tradition, spirit, construction, and materiality.The