Luxury Resort Living in Santa Fe, heated pool, hot tubs, 360 mountain top views

Monte Verde Villa is Santa Fe's finest offer for world-class accommodations. A private resort with a personal scope; a staff of 3 includes an onsite housekeeper, maintenance person, and groundskeeper, for the 26,000 sqft, 6 bedroom layout. The Villa features several living spaces, galleries, abundant kitchen areas, and a wine room with dual temperature zones. Additionally, the pool and hot tubs are a favorite as are the game rooms and terraces.

Befitting this high-desert terrain originally settled by the ancient Pueblo people called the Anasazi—known for the dwellings they carved into cliffs—the lower half of the house is buried in a hillside, its presence made even more inconspicuous by a series of landscaped roofs.
In recent years, the environmental movement has given rise to an evolving design aesthetic composed of hundreds of clevernesses. In many ways, this crème de la crème of eco-residences is an elegant disappearing act: Its chameleon-esque attributes include roof gardens irrigated by rainwater, a gray-water system that filters and recirculates water from showers and sinks to underground cisterns, and, tucked between trees on a terraced hillside, solar panels that heat the house's radiant floors and swimming pool. Drought-tolerant native plants are in abundance, while artificial turf laid over recycled tires provides a swath of green where children can play. Rock excavated from the site was crushed in place and used for gravel, and boulders were kept for landscaping.

The exquisite house wraps around the crest of a hill on three sides, with sweeping views of the city, the Santa Fe ski basin and the distant Jemez mountains. Shunning Southwest clichés, Blonkvist designed a contemporary post-and-beam system inspired by Japanese joinery; outside, durable copper tubing and copper-clad wood beams safeguard against the rot that might affect traditional vigas and latillas. Ample clerestory windows and skylights allow for daytime reading without artificial light, while doors can slide into walls, inviting southeasterly, piñon-scented breezes.
At the heart of the complex is a curvilinear, copper-clad library—as much a piece of sculpture as architecture, the textured surface evocative of the woven-silver jewelry. Around the structure, water cascades over polished black granite forms and through steel troughs, a delightful ode to the ear and eye.
The library, whose floors were made from scrap wood salvaged from the construction site, is conceived as an anthropomorphic entity with curved rib-like wooden supports. Textured native stone walls running north and south. The emotional center and main interior public area is the gallery, a light-filled space in which Douglas fir beams are angled like an abstract forest.

Architect Tim Blonkvist integrated the environmentally sensitive house he built for a Santa Fe couple right into the hillside site. Murase Associates designed the granite hardscape, including sculptural water features, and Design Workshop installed drought-tolerant plantings.
Moss-covered native rock from nearby San Miguel County carries from the exterior into most rooms of the house. Natural light bathes the entrance hall, where Larry Graeber’s 1996 plywood sculpture stands beside a Barcelona chaise covered in Moore & Giles leather.
The terrace is outfitted for alfresco dining and, beyond, a lounging area with David Sutherland seating from Dedon.
Blonkvist used polished alabaster on the fireplace surround in the master bedroom, which opens to an outdoor spa and views of the Santa Fe ski basin. Designers Guild bedcovering fabric. Stark carpet.
Raj green sandstone paves the area around the solar-heated pool. Artificial turf provides a maintenance-free alternative to grass, and boulders from the site were salvaged for landscaping.