Tuscon-based architect Rick Joy grew up in Maine, where he studied music and worked as a carpenter before going to architecture school at the University of Arizona. Joy has earned a reputation as a master of desert rammed-earth construction (Steven Holl calls his work "transcendent moments of space, light, and matter" in Rick Joy: Desert Works). For this project in the Green Mountains of Vermont, Joy departed from his usual vocabulary and created a gable-roofed, steel-framed cedar-shingle-and-stone house and barn. The traditional "stone-ender walls" are made from bedrock salvaged from the bottom of Lake Champlain, engineered by Olde World Masonry. Among the green features Joy incorporated in the design are a wind tower, solar panels, geothermal heating, and a hydropower feature, all of which means the clients will be "selling electricity back to the power company very soon," Joy says.
N.B. For more details on the project, read Suzanne Stephens' excellent writeup at Architectural Record. Photographs by Jean-Luc Laloux.
