ISBN: 0-393-73175-8
2005
100 color, 100 b&w photos / paper / 160 pages

Facing Southwest: The Life and Houses of John Gaw Meem


by Chris Wilson
Color photography by Robert Reck

View Table of Contents

Praise for Facing Southwest:

"Whole luscious spreads depict assortments of viga-banded portales, adobe fireplaces with parabolic openings, and entry paths leading through asymmetric beds of native plants to picturesquely massed homes."
—Period Homes

"Unlike previous books written about Meem, Wilson's work on the Southwest's most notable architect has the perspective of time that allows a deeper understanding of his role in contributing to the larger issues of cultural identity in the Southwest....Wilson draws from numerous archival sources and blends a casual writing style and rigorous scholarship that allow this book to be read on a variety of levels..The study of Meem's work is as valuable today as it has ever been, and Facing Southwest is an exceptional tool to understand it."
—New Mexico Historical Review

"The first intensive introduction to Meem's great houses-sun-baked retreats that echo deser mesas and open out to vast landscape panoramas. A book filled with dazzling photographs of the southwest landscape and Meem's signature houses, Facing Southwest is both intellectual biography and design handbook."
—SirReadALot.org

A colorful exploration of the life and work of Santa Fe architect John Gaw Meem.

Long recognized for his landmark public buildings in Santa Fe, Albuquerque, and Colorado Springs, John Gaw Meem's name is synonymous with Santa Fe style. A book filled with dazzling photographs of the southwest landscape and Meem's signature houses, Facing Southwest is both intellectual biography and design handbook. It features 18 Meem house plans; sumptuous color images by Robert Reck; classic black-and-white views by Ansel Adams and Laura Gilpin; and a design-pattern approach that makes Meem's residential vocabulary accessible for builders, architects, prospective home builders, and aficionados of the Southwest.

Advance praise

"Facing Southwest reconstitutes one instance of American regionalism in terms of Meem's distinctly modernist beliefs about structural innovation, environmental consciousness, economic and social reform and minimalist aesthetics. Chris Wilson's well-crafted biography relates an individual and a locale to larger cultural debates that defined the New Deal era, then and now."
- Gwendolyn Wright
Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation

About the Author
Chris Wilson is J. B. Jackson Professor of Cultural Landscape Studies in the School of Architecture and Planning at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque and author of The Myth of Santa Fe: Creating a Modern Regional Tradition.
About the Photographer
Robert Reck is an architectural and interior design photographer.

ISBN 0-393-73175-8 / 2005 / 100 color, 100 b&w photos / paper / 160 pages