Nine Santa Fe Design Details

While somewhat different, many Santa Fe homes share a similar architectural vocabulary. From vigas to canales to portals, Santa Fe style has a long history born from architectural necessity. Here are nine common features to notice.  

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Vigas and latillas. Vigas are the peeled log beams spanning the ceiling; latillas are the smaller aspen or cedar sticks laid across them, sometimes in herringbone. In older homes they're doing real structural work. Latillas are also used to make coyote fencing. 

The portal. The roofed porch running along the face of the house, carried on posts and carved corbels. It's a piece of passive engineering with no moving parts: the overhang blocks the high summer sun from the wall behind it, while the low winter sun slides underneath and reaches deep into the room. Same structure, opposite behaviors.

Canales. The spouts that throw roof water clear of the walls. Flat roofs have no eaves, which means canales are not part of the drainage system—they are the drainage system. A blocked or badly aimed one can deliver water onto a wall. Also good to make them part of the inspection process..

Canales

The kiva fireplace. Small, rounded, tucked in a corner, named for the round ceremonial chambers of the Pueblo world. Traditionally, Piñon wood was burned standing upright against the back wall rather than laid flat, which is why it lights fast, draws well, and takes the chill off a room on about three sticks.

The placita. A house wrapped around an enclosed courtyard — the word is the diminutive of plaza, a little plaza. Rooms open onto it instead of onto a hallway, so your daily circulation runs through open air. The walls block the April wind that makes spring here genuinely unpleasant, and they hold the day's warmth into the evening. Live in one for a season and the center of the household quietly relocates from inside the building to the middle of it.

Bancos and nichos. The plastered bench along the wall, usually near the fireplace, and the small niche carved into it, originally for a carved santo. Both are furniture built out of the house itself. 

Thick walls. If you house is adobe, thick walls are part of the design. A wall eighteen-inches thick takes in the afternoon heat at its outer face and passes it inward so slowly that one o'clock arrives indoors around bedtime, by which point the desert night is already pulling it back out.