HK Associates Honored as AIA Southern AZ Home of the Year Award Winner for Courtyards House
March 2, 2017
The Southern Arizona Chapter of the American Institute of Architects has awarded it’s highly regarded Home of the Year Award to HK Associates’ desert minimalist reinvention, Courtyards House, situated in a nondescript Tucson subdivision. Principals Kathy Hancox and Michael Kothke were honored to accept their second AIA Southern Arizona Home of the Year Award, the first of which they accepted in 2012 for Barrio Historico House.
Conceived as a series of interlocking interior and exterior volumes, the living spaces of the home contain, or are contained by six individual courtyards. Spatial boundaries are defined, yet fluid, with light, views and access flowing from one part of the home to the next. Each courtyard is distinctly xeriscaped with southern Arizona specimens, providing moments of focus and release – foreground and middle ground lend themselves to background and the distant mountain views beyond.
The Courtyards House also serves as a gallery for the clients’ collection of paintings and photographs by Tucson artists. In many cases, the colors and compositions of the individual art pieces are complimented by the adjacent xeriscapes, or through the home’s architectural play of light-and-shadow. The white interior and exterior walls act as a canvas for registering temporal atmospheres – the subtleties and contrasts imbued by the desert sky throughout the day and night.
View Courtyards House in its entirety here. Special thanks to the Southern Arizona Chapter of the American Institute of Architects and judges Christiana Moss, Erik Peterson, and Thamarit Suchart, as well as everyone who contributed to the construction and realization of the project.
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