Telescope House

The low impact Telescope House is innovative as a quarterly retreat, short-term rental and future permanent residence that emphatically recedes into this high-desert community with “shadow finishes” of stepped fireproof corten steel cladding on the exterior and within recycled dark-wood interior panels that extend light and view ever-inwards, whilst merging with this ‘milky-way dark sky community’ at night.

This 1,600 sf secular retreat melds into the world-renown Sedona landscape between the found telescopic frame created by parallel rows of 400-year-old Juniper trees. The found focal point of the telescopic frame is the iconic Cathedral Rock, which is visually magnetic in a Mount Fuji-esque sense especially at reverse sunset, when this deep-red-hematite-(iron oxide)-rock grouping comes forward against the taller white-grey cliff backdrop of Munds and Lee Mountain. Within this small found footprint, a land-based telescope clad in weathering steel (iron oxide) steps out toward the view in plan and section forming an east-facing sitting room (sometimes balcony) for reverse sunsets and moonrises year-round. In the winter, this east-facing room also welcomes sun and yet can be exteriorly shaded with a 97% automated black shade from sunrise to solar noon. Reciprocally, the interiority of the land-based telescope steps up and out to the east always offering a passing “zen view” when traversing between south-facing bedrooms and north-facing-non-en-suite bathrooms, as well as the coming and goings from a hike, ride or drive.

The poché of this unconventional plan also incorporates ample storage whilst the telescoping interior ‘shadow finishes’ frame and pull the ever-changing experience forward both as pure image but also as muted shadowy reflections of light and landscape. Concentric panels of FSC-certified recycled-wood-dust (waxed/buffed or lacquered) at floors, doors, cabinets, walls, ceilings incrementally step outwards in plan and section toward the east-facing room that collectively becomes an ever-changing theater of the landscape.