Polaris

The Polaris House, in Paradise Valley, Arizona, for a NASA Planetary Scientist and her husband, a mathematician, situates a small bathroom renovation and a Guest House addition to an exemplary “Arizona School” house, designed by architect Eddie Jones, in relation to the path of the sun, the geometry of the sky at night, the constellations, and the existing structure. The bathroom is transformed by the careful placement of three apertures, each considered an alibi for the design of a rather specific object. The first, a hood, inflected toward Polaris, the North Star, shielding the room from the hot summer sun. The second, a translucent tangerine bench in the shower, receiving sunlight from the east. And the third, an oriel window, associated with the vanity, celebrating the light of morning and evening, from the east and the west. Every detail sustains the principle that the bathroom is a contemplative place: a sanctuary and an observatory.

The Guest House engages in a dialogue with the existing house. The old and the new measure each other; the rough masonry against the factory edge of steel and glass. It puts out its toughest exposed concrete face wall to the south that the scorching sun beats upon, but the wall also invites the desert synanthropes to roost inside the 7 round holes during the spring season. The holes are arranged in the Big Dipper constellation fashion with 7 colored glass lenses as abstract desert flowers. The wall then becomes a living membrane between the inside and outside. The north face opens itself in a dialogue with the old house that reflects in the Guest House glass; they both meet in the pool and reflect upon the past and the present.