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Abiquiu House is designed by Anderson Anderson Architects for an anthropologist and a concert pianist in small New Mexico town on a desert site fronting Rio Chama. The architect used SIP for the wall panels and prefabricated 2×4 long-span trusses for roof and floors. The architect used truss system to simplify the assembly and to reduce the structural lumber support required in the long span of the panels. The architecture also has a thoroughly integrated animal house.
The design features an ingenious prefabricated system chain link, which can be rolled out and hung from above like curtains, stretched and bolted to the walls and frames with large, round steel washers. The chain link protects domestic animals and people from other animals or from accidental falls from the upper terraces. In some places the chain link stands away from the house, providing enclosure to exterior living spaces, and in other areas it hugs tight to the steel-siding-clad wall surfaces, providing visual continuity and textural relief to the large flat planes while at the same time providing a trellis for creeping plants that will grow up from the ground to further soften the profile of the house.
