Rick Joy
Tucson, Arizona
Rick Joy is an architect and, early on, was a builder. His designs present a clear response to the climate, landscape, and local material culture. He makes buildings that live well in their place, and are lived in well by their inhabitants. This is a slow process, requiring both patience and perseverance on the part of the architect, and has nothing to do with the search for recognition and fame. Grounded initially in the desert, where what he calls a “divine light” already exists and can be incorporated as part of the building’s “materials,” Joy has more recently taken the lessons of the desert to different contexts. For Joy, the design of a home is the architect’s most important task, and he believes that “experience of place, presence of mind, authenticity of spirit, and genuineness of origins are at the root of making the architecture of enthusiastic dwelling at home in a specific place.” Joy’s architecture is intended to be “a revelation of the real,” where the atmospheric qualities of a place and the rich material and sensorial experience of daily inhabitation are synthesized in the making of the building.
