Moonridge House

The Moonridge House continues Aranda\Lasch’s long-standing exploration of desert architecture, focusing on how buildings engage with light, topography, and climate while dissolving the boundary between interior and exterior.

location

Phoenix, AZ

status

Ongoing

year

2026

area

3100 SQFT

Architect of Record

Another Look

Civil Engineer

Land Development Group, LDG

Geotechnical Engineer

Ritter Engineering

Land Survey

Global Land Surveying

Mechanical and Plumbing Engineer

M&P Engineering

Structural Engineer

BDA Design

Landscape Architect

Chris Winters & Associates

General Contractor

Bill Smith

Situated on the north face of the Phoenix Mountain Preserve, the project renovates a modest 1950s slump-block house, reimagining it as a distilled, contemporary counterpart to the mid-century ranch homes that define the neighborhood. By removing decades of incremental additions, the design works deliberately within the original footprint, clarifying its spatial logic and fully opening the house to its expansive views.

The home is designed to take advantage of the site’s panoramic views of North Phoenix and the mountains beyond. It retains the original home’s T-shaped plan but clarifies the living and dining volume to open up views to the landscape and provide seamless access to the outdoors. The trusses and flat ceiling in this central volume were replaced with an open ceiling that extends outward to form a generous shaded terrace, turning the home’s center of gravity toward the landscape.

The living space extends further into the landscape by leveraging the home’s sloping site to create a landscaped terrace on the roof of the garage, which is nestled into the hillside. A new roof garden atop this lower garage reinforces the home’s outward extension, creating a continuous plane of indoor and outdoor rooms that hover above the slope and amplify the feeling of the home as a lookout over the desert beyond.

The three restrooms in this home provided an opportunity to explore different palettes, using texture and tone to create interest in these modest spaces. The powder room in green tile & terrazzo, the guest bathroom in white tile & terrazzo, and the primary bath in terrazzo & solid surface.

Recent photos from the construction site