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"View Slideshow\n\nThe houses of Bart Prince tend to be splendidly and intricately curvilinear in plan, section and elevation, but this desert dwelling not far from Santa Fe is inspired by the rigors of a triangulated geometry. Those familiar with the architect's work will look in vain for shapes that are concave or convex, except in the living space, where a sofa curves seductively around the fireplace in the conversation pit. Even his client, Jane Whitmore, when presented with the first model and sketches, expected to see interlocking, boldly rounded and projecting sculptural shapes. Instead, as she recalls, \"he was proposing all kinds of angles all over the place.\"\n\nA former practicing archaeologist and currently a clinical psychologist, she had been living for many years in a more than century-old Santa Fe adobe house. Upon reaching a significant birthday, she explains, \"I decided to get away from the historic house and do something contemporary. I liked what I knew of Bart's work and learned that he was eager to take on any kind of house and make it unique. Nothing was too small for him or too large.\" She was to build about 2,100 enclosed square feet on a strictly limited budget.\n\nAlthough the site is a conveniently short drive from Santa Fe, it has the look, quiet and solitude of a place that can be reached only by a long hike from a trailhead. Nevertheless, her property is bounded\u2014 across a wide ravine and a valley\u2014by the Santa Fe railroad track that connects to Los Angeles and Chicago. It cuts across a nearby hill at the edge of the Santa Fe National Forest. The trains go by four times a day, a picturesque interlude that the client loves. According to Prince, when the train passes the Whitmore property, the conductor tells the passengers that they are passing an architectural work of art, many rush to the train windows to take its picture, and the train bends slightly to that side. \"I think of the house as snaking its way down the hill like a reptile,\" says Prince. He designed it as two wedge-shaped structures that intersect as each follows the downward slope of the hillside. The change in elevation is more than 20 feet from top to bottom. One wedge descends from north to south, the other from the northwest to the southeast. In plan, the living and dining areas, the kitchen and the conversation pit are in the spacious core that this convergence creates. The exterior walls of the wedges are double, with long, approximately five-foot-wide stairway halls between them.\n\nThe house is single-story, with canted flat roofs throughout, except for the portion that appears to float above the core and covers all of it except the kitchen. Its ceiling height is nearly double that of the rest of the house, and it has a roof in the shape of a right triangle, supported by slender steel columns and enclosed by glass. Prince has thereby surrounded the principal spaces by a clerestory that offers light and views of hills and sky in a span of 360 degrees. \"I think it's important when you're building close to the mountains to look up to the tops of them where they meet the sky, not straight into their sides, so this is why I lifted the roof up,\" he says. Each of the three points of the triangle partially shelters a separate terrace\u2014one to the west for sunset viewing, another to the east for the sunrise and a third to the south for viewing the moon.\n\nPrince explains: \"I designed the interior spaces to make the building itself seem out of the way, to allow a full experience of the site. There is no primary view; it goes in all directions.\" One wedge begins at the south end as the master bedroom and patio and overlooks the ravine and the railroad track. A small planted courtyard adjoins the living/dining/kitchen space at the core. The other wedge begins at its northern end with a patio and a guest room that opens onto another planted courtyard, which allows a separate entrance to this wing. As the wedge heads downward near the sliver at its end, it encloses a hexagonally shaped windowed study, big enough for Whitmore's professional library, computer, ample work surface, chair and small piano. And, as almost everywhere else in her house, she can look directly at the sky. \"In New Mexico,\" says Prince, \"the sky is putting the show on at all times. I like to make my houses grab onto it.\""^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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