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western vista

Designing homes as a microcosm of the communities they plan, scottsdale’s swaback Partners relies on experience combined with intelligent dreaming

writ ten by David M. brown

RendeRing: The SWAbAck SynTheSiS

“On my second day … I was given a bucket of mortar and taken out to a partially completed tent: The soft-

ness of the fabric, the earthiness of the stone and the primi-

tive use of fire made everything feel more like The Arabian

Nights than anything to do with camping out,” recalls Vern

Swaback, FAIA, FAICP, founder of 35-year-old Swaback

Partners in Scottsdale, Arizona.

In January, 1957, the 17-year-old had traveled to Taliesin

West, in what is now Scottsdale, from his native Chicago.

There he had been inspired by Frank Lloyd Wright’s

Oak Park homes and Unity Temple — their horizontality

responding to the Midwest plains; their sensitive response to

climactic extremes and lifestyle needs; the innovative mate-

rials used; and their affirmation of a distinctively regional

American architecture, divorced from European paradigms.

A year before, Wright had interviewed Swaback at

Taliesin, in Spring Green, Wisconsin. The future architect

had finished his first year at the University of Illinois but

wanted more than academic exercises. He wanted an archi-

tectural vision that looked beyond designing structures to

one that was viscerally and intuitively created from a spiri-

tual devotion to place, context and community.

So Wright said to Swaback, as he did to all apprentices

since he had first chosen the site beneath the McDowell

Mountains in 1935: Live in a tent and learn the materials

of the desert.

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From far left: Frank Lloyd Wright and Vernon Swaback were photographed together, circa 1958/59. Swaback, one of his last apprentices, was preceded at Taliesin West and Taliesin by notables such as John Lautner and Paolo Soleri, who recently died in Paradise Valley, Arizona. “Wright set the stage for all architects,” says Swaback. “[H]is life at such close range … enriches my every thought.” Photo: Marvin Kohner for Esquire Magazine | Skyfire (1997) is the Swaback family home in the sublime desert of north Scottsdale — ‘a convincing bond,’ he says, ‘with its setting.’ Photo: DNK Photography

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“Living in direct exposure to nature

allowed me to practice on myself,” Swaback

later wrote in one of his books, The Custom

Home. “My tent, ‘home,’ was an encounter

with the fundamentals of form, space, light,

air, and comfort — the very same variables

that are critical in the design of homes from

the smallest to the most grand.”

For the final two and a half years of

Wright’s distinguished and vicissitudinous

life, Swaback served as an apprentice at

Taliesin West and practiced at the now

National Historic Landmark for another

18 years.

But the master had to be left to move for-

ward: “He either destroys you or you have

to kill him in your mind,” Swaback says.

“Imitation in architecture is a kind of death.”

In 1978, he founded what is now Swaback Partners, with

John E. Sather, AIA, AICP, a graduate of the Frank Lloyd

Wright School of Architecture, and Jon C. Bernhard, AIA,

NCARB, educated at North Dakota State University and St.

Cloud State University in Minnesota.

Today the highly awarded firm, including its interior

design division, Studio V, directed by Katherine Pullen,

Allied ASID, comprises 28 associates, including two land-

scape architects and four architects.

“Our varied work rests on three fundamentals,” Swaback

explains. “The first is, for any program and budget, design

is the greatest variable for creating value. The second is to

focus on the relatedness of all things, from the smallest to

Clockwise from top left: the 31,500-square-foot Univision television studio & Corporate Headquarters (2001) in Phoenix includes green principles such as rammed earth, solar sensitive and regionally appropriate materials and vegetation as well as fabric tensile shade structures and a natural water feature meandering and bridging the building and surrounding spaces. Photo: bill timmerman | Designed by Jon bernhard on 6-plus acres backed to a boulder-strewn desert preserve hill, the 9,000-square-foot Paradise valley Contemporary home (2011) masterfully conjoins art and architecture, offering dramatic approach, extensive water features, the finest materials and mountain and city lights views. | Zenlike stillness, simplicity, mystery and clarity: the roots of this 8,240-square-foot Paradise valley Contemporary (2004) are deep in the Far east. Designed by vernon swaback, assisted by project manager, Michael wetzel, the one-level home occupies 1.7 acres, looking south and north, respectively, to landmark Camelback and Mummy mountains. Photos: Dino tonn | a “spa for jets,” Hangar One (2003) in scottsdale comprises 129,000 square feet for up to 15 aircraft in two hangars, office space, a collector-auto gallery and entertainment areas. a 108-foot-long, 15,000-pound aluminum ‘paper’ airplane — a memory from the owner’s boyhood — readies for flight from the roof. Photo: Paul warchol Photography | this vernon swaback-designed home (2011) expresses the beauty of the exposed architectural block, smooth-faced and fluted masonry units, including their seamless use from the outside in. the north scottsdale site offers views of a desert golf course and the McDowell Mountains. Photo: ed taube

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the largest considerations. And the third is that we engage

each client as a co-creator.”

The multidisciplinary firm allocates about a third of its

time master-planning communities and cities, with residen-

tial and commercial components, including the 5,000-acre

Village of Kohler in Wisconsin (1976 –92); the 8,300-acre

DC Ranch in North Scottsdale (1994 –2008; residences

to present); and currently, the 1,000-acre Kukui Ula on

Kauai, Hawaii, and the 2,177-acre Martis Camp in Truckee,

California.

Nonresidential work comprises a second third. This

includes the paper-airplane-inspired Hangar One Jet Facility

at the Scottsdale Airpark, and the acclaimed Univision

headquarters in Phoenix. It also includes the firm’s oasis

headquarters, the 14,000-square-foot studio, gateway to the

historic Cattle Track arts neighborhood, once home to the

world-famous artists Fritz Scholder and Philip Curtis.

In addition, municipal contracts have included the

multi-award-winning Chaparral Water Treatment Plant in

Scottsdale, built to integrate with the city’s famous Hayden

Road greenbelt and community clubhouses, highlighted by

the LEED Silver-certified lodge at Martis Camp — celebrat-

ing the handcrafted National Park Service lodges and clubs

of the 1900s.

Current work includes the 165-room Iron Horse Hotel

Arizona on the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community

adjacent to Scottsdale; the Stanford University Golf

Performance Center; the Fort Apache Master Plan to show-

case the historic structures in the White Mountains of

Arizona; and 19 million acres being master-planned for the

Navajo Nation in Arizona, Utah and New Mexico.

Each partner, while most often working independently,

thrives from many dynamic relationships: “We have enjoyed

long-term relationships both with our clients and each other.

The Swaback synthesis is a three-part commitment between

each of us as individuals, with the future-enriching power

of architecture and planning, all made possible by uncom-

For the final two and a half years of Wright’s dis-

tinguished and vicissitudinous life, swaback served as

an apprentice at taliesin west and practiced at

the now National Historic Landmark for another 18 years.

www.matia.com 301 349 2330

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monly varied, able and committed

clients,” Swaback says. “We have given

our best to the best.”

Luxury homes, especially hillside

designs, are the final segment —

organic designs in spirit with the place

where they will be sited and the com-

munity they will join. “The explor-

atory design of every good house is

a microcosm of creating community,

including a thoughtful understanding

of location, systems, materials and

dreams,” Swaback says.

How does a great luxury home

begin? “Experience combined with

intelligent dreaming is how all great

designs come about,” Swaback says.

“The process of truly creative designs

begins in the spirit with feelings —

long before there are ideas, drawings

and models.”

John and Mary Margaret Sather’s

2,500-square-foot hillside home in

Sedona, an hour and a half north

of Scottsdale, was sensitively built

into 45-degree angle slopes, and Jon

and Teri Bernhard’s 3,950-square-foot

home is integrated with its boulder-

strewn 1.5-acre lot in Fountain Hills,

just east of Scottsdale. “This is a home

that celebrates the character and spirit

of desert life,” Bernhard says. “Teri and

I wanted a home that married itself

seamlessly to its environment.”

Similarly configured is Vernon

and Cille Swaback’s own home, the

5,000-square-foot “Skyfire,” completed

in 1997 in the high desert of Pinnacle

Peak, north of Scottsdale. “‘Skyfire’ is

my family version of what it felt like

as a teenage apprentice, living in close

contact to the desert at Taliesin West,”

he says. “When architecture is created

with respect for the desert, the desert

becomes the architecture.”