Antoine Predock famously said, ‘The best buildings are time travelers.’ He believed that great architecture is timeless – passing through generations gathering stories. The aspiration toward a timeless architecture continues to guide the studio. Our studio was founded in 1967, when Antoine – after completing his education, internships, and travels around the world – was given the opportunity to develop La Luz; a community on Albuquerque’s west side. He began with careful observation of the windswept site, a bluff overlooking the Rio Grande, mapping weather patterns, solar paths, bird migration, mosquitos, and other conditions that could effect the life of the people who would inhabit the site. The result was not only an iconic, award-winning example of sustainable design, but also the conceptual framework for the studio that bears his name.
La Luz, at its core, is an experimental project. The buildings were carefully fit to the landform, preserving views and limiting excavation. Antoine shaped the design into a sweeping yet compact form that protects habitat and view corridors in perpetuity. Interlocking courtyards, loggias and trellises shelter from prevailing winds and harsh high desert light while opening toward cooling breezes and distant horizons. Natural materials – including site cast adobe and locally harvested timber – root the architecture in place. Animated by light and shadow, La Luz tells the story of place while exploring the dialogue between ephemeral experience and the timeless marks we leave on the land.
Antoine often invoked John McPhee’s exploration of the roadcut in Annals of the Former World as a portal into time. The roadcut reveals the relationship between timelessness and ephemera: readable eons that predate human history, capped by a thin encrustation of cultural debris—beer cans, hubcaps, and artifacts of evolving technologies. This idea informed our architecture, simultaneously exploring timelessness and ephemera, as we leave our indelible mark on the land. Lighter materials may capture atmosphere and change, while weightier stone and concrete may anchor buildings to the earth. In Antoine’s mind, architecture could be rooted in the earth while aspiring to the sky.
Our collective practice continues Antoine’s vision through a culture of collaboration, research and experimentation. Rooted in the landscapes and cultural histories of New Mexico, the studio applies the same place-based rigor to sites across the world – working within distinct climates, geologies and traditions. Each project begins careful study in order to inform an architecture rooted in its place while engaging with the broader human landscape. Through light, shadow, detail and material, the work seeks to carry meaning across borders and through time.
