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"View Slideshow\n\nOnce upon a time, diamonds were a girl's best friend. Now, it might be argued, it's LEED Platinum.\n\nLEED stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design\u2014and Platinum is the most elite rating given by the nonprofit U.S. Green Building Council for ecologically savvy architecture. \"My husband and I had a strong desire to build in a sustainable way,\" explains the owner of a Santa Fe residence designed and built to Platinum standards by Overland Partners Architects of San Antonio, Texas (official LEED status was not available for residential structures when the project was conceived). \"We wanted to integrate the environment into our home and our home into the environment.\"\n\n\"Our goal was to fully integrate the residence into the site,\" says architect Tim Blonkvist.\n\nBefitting this high-desert terrain originally settled by the ancient Pueblo people called the Anasazi\u2014known for the dwellings they carved into cliffs\u2014the lower half of the house is buried in a hillside, its presence made even more inconspicuous by a series of landscaped roofs. \"Sustainability begins with the proper orientation of a building,\" observes Overland founding principal Tim Blonkvist, whose prodigious environmental track record includes the Lady Bird Johnson National Wildflower Research Center at the University of Texas, Austin. \"Our goal was to fully integrate the residence into the site.\"\n\nIn recent years, the environmental movement has given rise to an evolving design aesthetic composed of hundreds of clevernesses. In many ways, this cr\u00E8me de la cr\u00E8me of eco-residences is an elegant disappearing act: Its chameleonesque attributes include roof gardens irrigated by rainwater, a gray-water system that filters and recirculates water from showers and sinks to underground cisterns, and, tucked between trees on a terraced hillside, solar panels that heat the house's radiant floors and swimming pool. Drought-tolerant native plants are in abundance, while artificial turf laid over recycled tires provides a swath of green where the clients' children can play. Rock excavated from the site was crushed in place and used for gravel, and boulders were kept for landscaping.\n\nThe house wraps around the crest of a hill on three sides, with sweeping views of the city, the Santa Fe ski basin and the distant Jemez mountains. The wife, a jewelry designer, collaborated with a team headed by Jim Rimelspach of Wilson Associates in Dallas to create \"interiors that would complement the architecture,\" she says. \"I wanted it to be kind of luscious feeling but not overdone.\" Spaces had to be at once public and private\u2014the couple are philanthropists who frequently host candlelit benefit dinners for 150 guests.\n\nShunning Southwest clich\u00E9s, Blonkvist designed a contemporary post-and-beam system inspired by Japanese joinery; outside, durable copper tubing and copper-clad wood beams safeguard against the rot that might affect traditional vigas and latillas. Ample clerestory windows and skylights allow for daytime reading without artificial light, while doors can slide into walls, inviting southeasterly, pi\u00F1on-scented breezes. \"The owners wanted the connection between the city and the mountains,\" explains the architect. \"Like a Texas dogtrot, it brings in fresh air throughout the house.\"\n\n\"It's nice to be able to see and hear water,\" remarks Blonkvist, \"knowing it is not coming from the tap.\"\n\nAt the heart of the complex is a curvilinear, copper-clad library\u2014as much a piece of sculpture as architecture, the textured surface evocative of the woven-silver jewelry the wife designs. Around the structure, water cascades over polished black granite forms and through steel troughs, a delightful ode to the ear and eye. \"It's nice to be able to see and hear water,\" remarks Blonkvist, \"knowing it is not coming from the tap.\"\n\nThe library, whose floors were made from scrap wood salvaged from the construction site, is conceived as an anthropomorphic entity with curved riblike wooden supports. They provide a counterpoint to what Blonkvist calls \"the primary organizing elements of the house\"\u2014textured native stone walls running north and south. The emotional center and main interior public area is the gallery, a light-filled space in which Douglas fir beams are angled like an abstract forest. Observes the wife: \"You can stand in the wonderful gallery Tim designed and see the city lights on one side and feel tucked in by this amazing mountain range on the other. It's the best of both worlds.\"\n\nThe property continues to evolve, with butterflies and birds drawn with increasing frequency to the native plants growing on the roof. \"Tim thought nature could be the greatest driver of this site,\" she says. \"I can't think of anything I'd tweak.\""^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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