Ancient themes come forth in a stunning contemporary design by renowned architect Bart Prince. Located on the very edge of the Cibola National Forest in the Sandia foothills, beneath the sacred mountain the Sandia Indian Pueblo people call Bien Mur, this amazing residence sits dynamically poised on that border between Albuquerque and a rugged wilderness, between the outer and inner worlds. A one-of-a-kind, authentically American, architectural gem - never to be replicated.
If you're seeing this on a large widescreen monitor, you might find that setting the screen zoom level to 125% or larger makes for better viewing.
"Part mountain, part cliff dwelling, part sundial, part nomadic campsite, the Scherger-Kolberg Residence gathers itself into an upthrust range of masonry cliffs and canyons, and opens eastward around a glass-walled courtyard beneath radial steel beams that come together like tent poles into triangular points - or like hands raised in prayer to the mountains and the sun."
Christopher Curtis Mead THE ARCHITECTURE OF BART PRINCE - A Pragmatics of Place W.W. Norton & Company
. An Interview with Bart Prince about The House Beneath The Mountain
We were able to sit down with architect Bart Prince recently and talk about the home on camera. We have a half-hour video documentary of sorts, with musical soundtrack, in the works. For the immediate moment we're dividing up the raw interview into "chapters" or "chunks," and posting a chapter every few days on the residence blogsite. Each chapter is roughly four to six minutes long.
The Website
We've loosely organized the site to try to offer different perspectives on what is, truly, an amazing, but complex, residence. There's some inevitable "overlap" of visual presentation here, between the pages, but each page has a focus, for want of a better word.
The Construction page is snapshots taken during the lengthy building process.
The Bart Prince page is a multi-media profile of this most unique talent, whose reputation is now global. Lots of sources, lots of links.
The Design page offers some insight into owners Suzanne Kolberg and Dan Scherger's thinking when they made the decision to build, and hired Bart Prince. Their travels throughout the Southwest, along with their background from Montana, gave them an appreciation of American Indian design that is reflected throughout. We've started transforming the interior, temporarily, with photos, graphics, and more, that reflect the Native American theme. More below.
The Residence page is the home as Suzanne and Dan have lived there, reflecting their unpretentious sense of taste and style.
The Interior page is the home with a New Mexico touch, a close-up look at southwestern symbols/art in the time/space reality of the home. The Perspectives page is all about looking at the home from different angles - literally and symbolically. There's some good low-level aerial shots here, as well as a symbolic journey to the Hopi, the original pueblo people, descendants/relatives of the peoples of Chaco and Mesa Verde.
The Nightshots page looks at the home in a whole different light. We've interspersed night photos at the residence with a wide selection of "nocturnal" Native American art.
The Vistas page is views and their vantage points. There are six "lookouts" - decks/terraces looking out - four on the westside, looking out over Albuquerque, the Rio Grande Valley, and a hundred miles west, and two looking out toward Sandia Mountain.
The Neighborhood page gives an idea of what's "around and about" the home. Here's the Tramway, ski area, national forest, and lots more.
The Details page has facts and figures. Here's the labels of appliances, lot size, square footage, and various assorted details, price and contact information.
A view from the home looking out across the Rio Grande Valley and beyond. About seventy miles to the west, on the left above, is Mount Taylor, elevation 11, 304 ft., known to the Navajo Indians as Tsoodzil - Turquoise Mountain - sacred mountain of the south. It is one of four peaks marking the four cardinal directions and the boundaries of Dinetah - the traditional Navajo homeland. The mountain is also sacred to the Acoma, Laguna, and Zuni Pueblo people.
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