Casita OBSCURA

Casita OBSCURA is a detached, 750 sf stand-alone component of a three-phase transformation of a 2400 sf mid-century home. The transformation started as a renovation that took the original home back to its bones to reveal affinities between old and new, and inside and outside, through light, material, and attention to detail.

Conceived as a bold yet discrete amenity, Casita OBSCURA enhances the connection of the original home to its Sonoran Desert setting. It is both a backdrop and a retreat, foregrounding the surrounding landscape and vegetation and underlining the distant horizon.

Taking its name from the Latin “camera obscura” (meaning dark chamber), Casita OBSCURA is a lens on the desert. In contrast to the cinematic experience of the main house, with its floor to ceiling glass, open floor plan, and panoramic views, Casita OBSCURA is divided into three distinct spaces: a room for sleeping, a room for bathing, and a room for living. Each of these rooms has a specific aperture to the world: the room for sleeping is focused on the intimacy of the desert foothills and the Catalina Mountains, the room for bathing is defined by a triangular portal to the sky, while the room for living frames a view to the city of Tucson and the distant Santa Rita mountains.

Clad in dark gray, low-cost, cement-board panels that blend into the shadow play of the desert vegetation, and with a roof that slopes away from the main home, the form of Casita OBSCURA is disguised, reading as a simple, planar façade. Defined by the rhythms of the cement board modules, this west elevation is marked by a solitary, penetrating opening. Angled from most vantage points, upon approach, the darkness of this opening reveals the entrance and inviting view into and through the casita.