Monarch & Mesa

The coursework brief was blunt: design a place, not a page. Interaction had to be carried by an environment rather than a screen.

The setting — rugged rock, golden dusk light, profound stillness north of Las Vegas — is the kind of landscape design usually interrupts.

Sited the architecture along the contour of the land in rammed earth and reclaimed stone, keeping the profile low so mountain vistas stay unobstructed.

Composed the experience as a sequence of moments: canopy for shade and intimacy, open-air rooms framing the desert, a curated reading collection, quiet nooks for gathering.

Treated off-grid systems — solar, rainwater harvesting, greywater filtration, drought-adapted planting — as part of the interaction model rather than a mechanical appendix.

A presented walkthrough covering architecture, visitor experience, and systems — a spatial narrative rather than a slide deck of renders.

The study is a preface to a longer body of work: understand how a place is read before designing anything that reports on it.