The Nakai house surrounds a bookshelf and captures the spirit of the client and the surrounding homestead. A parabolic roof that seems to move with the wind and the surrounding dunes rises above a spandrel glass rain screen that reflects the desert landscape. Vertical tongue and groove cedar wraps the house above the band of glass and abuts to the knife edge overhang of the corten steel roof. A ribbon window frames Cedar Mesa perfectly while seated at the kitchen table and a window seat projects outward beneath the shade of a tree, a place for Lorraine to read. The house is divided by a large bookshelf running the length of the home with a long slender public corridor and the more private bed and bath accessible through the bookshelf. One of the few DBB homes to complete construction in 5 months and the first to end the semester with the lights on. The DBB construction process is often as unpredictable as the weather in the Desert Southwest; the 8 UCD students successfully navigated all obstacles along the way resulting in a home that reflects the very landscape it resides within.
