Aligned With the Skyline
The pool runs on a straight line toward the Superstition Mountains, so the view is framed from the deck, the patio and the water.
The Project
Inside The Desert Escape
Travertine decking, a stacked-stone outdoor kitchen and a pool lined up dead center with the Superstition skyline.
The Desert Escape sits on a desert lot below the Superstition Mountains, and the whole backyard is organized around that view. The pool runs long and straight off the back of the house, lined up with the Superstition skyline, and everything else on the property is placed to keep that sight line open.
Travertine ties the yard together. The same warm, multi-tone stone, laid in a mixed-size pattern, covers the pool deck, the long patio along the house, the gate steps and the kitchen counters, so the hardscape reads as one surface from the back door to the perimeter wall. Stacked stone does the vertical work: it wraps the raised wall along the pool, the outdoor kitchen and the pillars of the perimeter fence.
Three bronze scuppers pour from that raised wall into the pool, and the wall is capped in travertine so it doubles as a ledge. At one end, a tanning ledge edged in a band of mosaic tile gives loungers a shallow place to sit in the water. After dark, the pool lights and the lit caps on the stone pillars take over from the sunset.
The covered patio is where the house opens up. Under a wood-plank ceiling with a ceiling fan and recessed lights there is a wicker lounge set on a rug and a hot tub tucked into the corner, a few steps from the pool. Beside it, the outdoor kitchen is built into stacked stone with a stainless grill, stainless doors and drawers, a pizza oven on the counter and bar seating beside the pool.
Past the wall, the landscape stays desert. Rock-lined dry washes, gravel paths and boulders run between saguaros, prickly pear and round-clipped shrubs, and an iron gate between lit stone pillars opens onto travertine steps that lead out into it. The front yard carries the same palette along the curved driveway, so the property reads as one piece from the street.
