Q & A with Ignacio Salas-Humara

Following is a Q & A I had via email, with Ignacio Salas-Humara, the architect who designed the AIA featured house Cielito Lindo. Ignacio’s responses are candid and insightful, as well as useful for those of us looking to use an architect.

Q:
A quick Google search shows the Boerne house is for sale?

A:
Yes Cielito Lindo is for sale. The client wants to do another house with me. She says it's a creative outlet for her. She really enjoyed the design-build-decorate process of Cielito Lindo (we really did have a lot of fun collaborating, and she had fun furnishing it and playing with the colors), and she wants to do it again, this time in a one-story. Her two daughters are leaving the nest soon to go off to college, and she wants a smaller, one-story house.

Q:
Looking through your portfolio, it appears that each consecutive house is getting a bit more modern. Is this a result of clients becoming more comfortable with modern design in a rural setting, or is this a function of you the architect pushing for that medium, or a combination of both?

A:
I'm a modernist at heart. That was my training at...

Cornell University School of Architecture.

Everything we were taught back then was white, in the International Style of LeCorbusier (look at Park Place project on my website). But you are right---around San Antonio and the Hill Country there is very little demand for modern architecture. I have to work modernism into a project that would normally be traditional -- a kind of guerilla modern. People are very receptive to modernist ideas about light, exposed structure, and flowing spaces. Even a traditional looking house can have this, as long as I use traditional materials. The nice thing about "rural" is that it includes corrugated tin sheds, barns, and such, which is great for me, because my favorite material is corrugated tin. So sometimes I can introduce it into a house that would otherwise be traditional (see the Rocking P Ranch House on our website). All I have to say to the male client is that it is virtually maintenance-free and that he will never have to paint the exterior, and he's hooked!

There is only one project I've done that is strictly traditional and historicist: the Medina Ranch House Compound. The clients asked me to design a house that when finished would look like it had been there for 150 years. I researched historic German Hill Country houses, looked at local examples from the 1850's, and planned a compound of buildings that looked like they grew and added and connected to each other as the family grew over generations.

I am fascinated by the Texas regional style of firms like Lake Flato, Ford, Powell and Carson, and Frank Welch. I moved down to Texas from NYC in 1989, and I became aware of that kind of architecture that responds to local climate, local materials, local building habits, and local historical architectural precedent a real honest and practical kind of architecture. There's inherent beauty in something simple and honest. That spoke to me, and it has influenced me. It shows up in a lot of my work in Texas, even the full-on modern work. I live in an 1896 house in the historic district in Comfort, and the local vernacular has had an influence in my work.

Outwardly, Cielito Lindo looks like an exception, but I took into account the placement of the building on the site, the direction of prevailing breezes, the sun as it moves across the sky, the existing stands of trees (as well as the spaces between the stands). The house is extremely energy efficient. And natural ventilation allows living without A/C throughout most of the year. The vertical slot of windows on the southeast and northwest ends open to allow southeast breezes to flow through the house, and the stair tower and cylinder act as thermal chimneys. Each has an operable light monitor on top to allow the rising hot air to escape. I used natural materials as much as possible (flagstone and travertine floors, wood cabinetry, granite and travertine counters, travertine showers, stucco interiors and exterior, etc.

Q:
Having written two pieces on two architects and their designs submitted in San Antonio, Tx. at the 2005 AIA Homes Tour, you and FAB Architects in Austin, Tx. I can’t help but notice that FAB has done lofts in their past work, yet as far as I can tell - you haven't. Would you be open to working on a loft project? If so, what criteria would lead you to be involved in such a project?.

A:
I've never designed a loft, but I would love to do one. I designed two small houses on stilts that were on very steep sites that were hard to build on. I designed each house as a loft space in that the master bedroom/bath was in the same big space as the living/dining/kitchen area. The Dog House Studio (see our website) was essentially treated as a loft space. The owners were newly arrived from NYC and had been living in a loft. They wanted the studio to have the feeling of a New York loft. So I've never designed a loft (which is ironic, since I lived in Manhattan for two years before moving to Texas), but I've come close a few times with those projects.

PS: My favorite project is the Trailer House Remodel (on our web site). That was a lot of fun.

You can contact Ignacio Salas-Humara at:

Ignacio Salas-Humara AIA, Principal
L o p e z S a l a s A r c h i t e c t s, I n c .
www.lopezsalas.com

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