Haute Houses

"I live in 1500 square feet," Bruder reports, "all of them very comfortable thanks to high-efficiency A/C units, appropriate window shading, and the placement of the building on the land. The main windows of the house face due northwest, and I've shaded 80 percent of the glass with a scrim of perforated metal. Metal doesn't draw heat in, it reflects it. You have to shade the glass, period. My maximum electricity bill in July is 150 bucks. Okay?"

Bruder's gotten good at explaining to laypeople why metal boxes are a good thing in the desert. "The metal is a skin," he says with measured patience. "It's not a factor in the thermal value of the wall." He designed his three-story, 46-unit Vale condominium complex with almost no east- or west-facing windows, and shaded its window portals with more of the perforated steel that's become a signature of his many well-known designs.

Mike, a twentysomething who's been living at his girlfriend's Vale condo for a couple of months now, says the place is "really cool," but he's not necessarily talking about the temperature.

"It's kind of strange that the outdoor staircases are all made out of metal," he says. "They look really great, but you can't really touch them during the day because they're like oven-hot. If you stand near the windows, you can kind of feel the heat radiating into the apartment. And forget about opening the windows, because you can't."

"Yeah," Bruder says when he hears young Mike's story. "You might want to keep your windows closed in the summertime in Phoenix, no matter where you live."

Someone threw a rock through one of the Vale's downstairs retail windows recently, but the place is a success: 80 percent of its condo units are occupied, and although it still looks deserted, the retail space is entirely rented out (a new furniture store/cafe will take residence later this year).

Jones is less patient than Bruder is with the whole "glass boxes are hard to cool!" discussion. "The problem isn't the wrong materials," he groans. "It's with uneducated home buyers. You know where the sun rises and sets. You see a house that's sited on the land so that its windows all face west, or one with huge windows with nothing to stop the heat outside of the glass. And you say, 'I won't buy this because the architect doesn't give a shit about my utility bill.' You simply don't buy a house that's about an architect's self-indulgence. Good modern buildings exhibit a responsibility toward their environment. Come on. That's Architecture 101."

But Doug Holton from Salt River Project's PowerWise energy information program doesn't think there's anything responsible about combining glass and metal in any living environment. "We haven't done any studies on this," Holton says, "but it kind of stands to reason that it's more difficult to insulate a glass wall than a stucco or frame wall."

Holton says that any building's greatest heat gain comes through its windows, and windows wrapped in wood frames are the most efficient. "Designers will tell you that metal in front of glass reflects heat, but as a rule of thumb, glass surrounded by metal has less energy efficiency than by vinyl or wood, because metal and glass heat similarly as one unit, while the other materials keep glass from absorbing or drawing more heat."

The answer to living in a glass box and keeping it cool isn't so much about siting or materials or shading, according to Tim Russell, the man behind v2. It's all about size. Designed by architect Joe Herzog, a student of both Bruder and Wendell Burnette, v2's small-scale prefab boxes are being marketed rather hopefully (and somewhat redundantly) as not just modern homes but as "a world where the lifestyle you choose is reflected in the places you reside and the places you live." Whether one chooses to live in one of Herzog's houses or just reside there, one does so in cramped quarters. The basic unit, known as the v2flat, is a low rectangle of glass and movable panels that looks more like a car rental kiosk than a house. The 384-square-foot interior of the flat features a living room, kitchenette, and bathroom drawn in smoothly modern lines -- a space perfect for anyone whose idea of bliss is pretending he's living in the Lunar Module. More rooms can be added on -- even stacked! -- to build a larger structure.

"I haven't had one person who's seen our product not contemplate whether they could live here," Russell says with no irony whatsoever. To prove how livable v2 is, Russell's business partner, Vin Saccento, plans to move into the v2 prototype this summer, which is currently resting in a parking lot on Washington Street.

"There were two cars parked here before," Russell says, pointing to the slick, shiny v2flat. "Now there will be people living here. Not to brag, but we are on the cutting edge of the industry with these homes. There aren't any others out there like ours."