It all started as a single digit child when my grandmother purchased me a ¢25 cactus from Frank’s Nursery & Crafts on the southside of Chicago.  I recall using the Dewey Decimal System to locate books on how to care for a cactus in this thing called a library.  Throughout the course of my research, my love affair with the desert was born.  Over the years I would tend to The Cactus as if it was a pet.  I knew which corners of the home it liked best.  I knew it didn’t need much water.  I knew it liked to hang out outside during the summer months.  My grandmother would pass on while I was still in grade school, but The Cactus and I would carry on.  

My father was the most stubborn man you’d ever meet. When I went off to college, I was tempted to take The Cactus with me to secure it from my father who would water it profusely.  He just wouldn’t listen.  After all it was just a cactus to him but so much more to me.  What started off as a 4-inch pup would grow beyond 6 feet tall by the time I was a sophomore at the University of Illinois.  His stubbornness would persist throughout my college career.  He eventually watered The Cactus so it to its demise.  I came home from school one semester to find The Cactus lumped over, plagued by root rot, and severely discolored.  I was heartbroken.  To this day, I blame myself for not taking a childhood companion off to school with me.  I was just so concerned about transporting it to and from campus.  As it turned out The Cactus would’ve been better off in my care.  Upon reflection of The Cactus’ death, I realized how much it taught me.  Caring  for it was amongst my first lessons about growth.  As the years would pass, those lessons would be applied to all facets of my life from investing to managing relationships.  With discipline, proper care, and nourishment, anything will grow.   

As a child, the more research I did on cacti the more obsessed I became with the desert.  In high school I conceptualized me and a desert home.  Desert Contemporaine is an ode to The Cactus and turning a young boy’s desert dreams into a grown man’s reality.  As I sit on the grounds, I think, “Where am I going to transplant The Cactus?” as if it’s still with me.  The home is an architectural celebration, and all building materials are invited.  However, there’s a guest of honor among us.  Versatile. Durable. Beautiful in every sense of the word.  It is the most understated of all building materials.  Like the human fingerprint, no two square feet are alike.  Rugged and raw.  Polished to a matte finish.  We bow our heads to Concrete.  

We did what the property told us to do without hesitation.  It was a balancing act.  Hard and cold concrete binding like cations and anions to warm dashes of wood, plush fabrics, and luxury finishes throughout.  “You can take the boy out of the city.  But you can’t take the city out of the boy.” I consistently recall growing up in Chicago’s concrete jungle, hence the property’s interior urban flair.

It’s a minimalist contemporary structure fully antagonized by what appears to be apocalyptic ruins and cyberpunk vibes.  Composed of concrete and exposed rebar, our furniture nods to civil engineers, structural  engineers, architects, and their tradecraft.  Too often we are only enamored by a structure’s exterior and its aesthetics.  Our skeletal system is to muscle as what rebar is to concrete.  We respect the construction process with distressed custom pieces that are slightly deconstructed.  “True beauty lies beneath.” – They, whoever they are.  
“The grounds will remain untrammeled and undisturbed.  There shall be no transplanting of anything.  Leave everything as is.”  These are the instructions I gave my team.  There are no weeds here.  There are no all-stars amongst the vegetation.  Not one plant is prettier than the one next to it.  Nothing here can exist alone.  Every plant, shrub, rock or creature is one piece of this puzzle.  

Directly behind the home sits a gabion wall comprised of the very stones that once laid exactly where the structure rests.  No stone went unturned.  Pun intended.  The wall’s true assignment is to protect the home from downhill erosion, but its functionality is masked as a work of art.   Here Tetris-styled organization retains the perfect chaos of the mountain in 3-D and in real time.  

Simply put, Desert Contemporaine is our love letter to Joshua Tree and all its natural beauty.