MODERN SPANISH-PUEBLO HOMES [SOLD]

MODERN SPANISH-PUEBLO HOMES by William Lumpkins

Publisher: Western Plan Service

First Edition, softcover, 102 pages, circa 1946

Illustrated with plan drawings and layouts by Lumpkins of homes

Condition: there is some yellowing of the paper.  The front paper cover is detached, but included.  The back cover is missing.

From the Text:

Historically, the Spanish-Pueblo house is a combination of the building practices of the early Spanish settlers of New Mexico and the Indians who were living here at that time. The Spanish brought with them the "know-how" on making sun-dried brick of clay and sand (adobe to us); doors made of wood; corbels to transfer a beam load to a post or wall; grills for protection of copings (now referred to as windows); the fireplace and a plan for building a single house around a court or “patio” for protection. The Indian mixed the mud as dry as possible, shaping a layer by hand and allowing to dry, then repeating until a wall was completed. The result was a house of mud with floors of mud and ceilings of large round beams (vigas) placed about two-foot on center and smaller poles lying across the beams. Over this structure was placed mud in layers up to about two feet in thickness. This formed a deck to shed the water and a place to lounge in the warm sun. The Indian built a multi-story apartment house. The Spanish never adopted this pattern. Towns were planned in accordance with instructions from the Crown of Spain. This was usually around a plaza with several large gates to the fields outside. The back walls of the houses and public buildings around the plaza formed the wall of a fort.

William Lumpkins was an artist and architect best known for his abstract watercolors and pioneering solar adobe architecture. He was a founding member of the Transcendental Painting Group and cofounder of the Santa Fe Art Institute.  He was born on April 8, 1909 at the Rabbit Ears Ranch, in Territorial New Mexico, and died on March 20, 2000 in Santa Fe, New Mexico. 

Lumpkins was an early proponent of passive solar design, having built his first passive solar house in Capitan, NM in 1935. The former residence of solar scientist Dr. J. Douglas Balcomb in Santa Fe, designed by Lumpkins with his company Sun Mountain Design, is considered by many the "quintessential solar adobe house.” 

Lumpkins started exhibiting his paintings in 1932, most of which were watercolors. He met artist Raymond Jonson in Santa Fe in 1935, and exhibited with Jonson and other members of the Transcendental Painting Group from 1938-1942. Lumpkins was one of the earlier Abstract Expressionists, having employed the style about a decade before other American artists popularized it.