Images Arizona (April 2026)

September 26, 2026

Limited to only 16 guests.

Don’t Miss Out Call Today!

As former owner of The Carefree Traveler, Paula and her husband Peter invite you to experience true Tuscan living on a unique culinary and wine journey this September. Stay in a charming villa, relax in your spacious en-suite bedroom, and savor exquisite meals prepared by a private chef.

Enjoy curated excursions including the nearby hilltop town of Montepulciano, engage in hands-on pasta-making classes, and relish tastings of regional cheese, wine, and olive oil. Your hosts will be joined by Chef Asia based in Val d’Orcia, expert local guide Lucia Norrito, and Claudia Alfieri, owner of Dream Italian Villa & Tours. Together, they’ll lead you through a week filled wit h flavor, culture, and unforgettable Tuscan beauty.

To book this incredible journey, contact Paula DeDario-Martori | 602.510.0805 | paula@carefreetraveler.com

COLOR, DEPTH & ART OF LAYERING: INSIGHTS FROM SUE B.

When you begin with rich, classic furnishings, the possibilities for your accent colors open wide. In this vibrant setting, a bold turquoise area rug establishes the room’s energy and direction. I like to repeat a chosen color in at least three meaningful touchpoints to create a cohesive ribbon of color throughout the space.

Here, turquoise appears in the glass lamps flanking the bed, the striking metal artwork by Trevor Swanson positioned above it, and the mixed‑media pieces by Axton‑Giddings that balance the composition on either side. Turquoise pillows and a welcoming cuddle chair complete the palette, resulting in an unapologetic, layered expression of bold, confident color.

THIRD THURSDAY ART NIGHT

THURSDAY, APRIL 16 FROM 4 TO 7 PM

THIRD THURSDAY ART NIGHT

THURSDAY, APRIL 16 FROM 4 TO 7 PM

f u l l s e r v i c e i n t e r i o r d e s i g n & f u r n i s h i n g s | w w w o m d e s i g n g r o u p c o m

S ANDERSON LINCOLN

PUBLISHER

Shelly Spence

MANAGING EDITOR

Joseph J. Airdo

GRAPHIC DESIGNER

Meaghan Mitchell

CONTRIBUTING WRITERS

Joseph J. Airdo

Francine Coles

Shannon Severson

PHOTOGRAPHERS

Francine Coles

Loralei Lazurek

ADVERTISING SALES

Cindi Calcinari 860-966-3271 cindi@imagesaz.com

From the Publisher

There is a moment — if you’ve been paying attention — when you stop seeing buildings and start reading them. The angle of a roof overhang, precisely calculated to block summer sun while admitting winter light. The way a floor material extends from inside to out without interruption, dissolving the boundary between shelter and landscape. The column that does not merely hold a ceiling but announces an idea about how people deserve to inhabit space. In Arizona, where the climate is both gift and challenge, design is never decorative. It is argument.

April’s issue of Images Arizona celebrates design as exactly that: a form of reasoning. Architecture, at its finest, is not the art of construction but the art of intention — of understanding a place, a person, a community, and translating that understanding into form. The architects, landscape designers and craftspeople in these pages have spent careers asking the question that drives all meaningful design: What should this place make you feel?

That question doesn’t belong to architects alone. We find it in every discipline where intention shapes experience — in fashion, in theater, even in nature itself. Design, in its broadest sense, is the human impulse to shape experience with intention — to refuse the accidental and choose the deliberate.

Images Arizona P.O. Box 1416

Carefree, AZ. 85377 623-341-8221

shelly@imagesaz.com imagesarizona.com

Spring in Arizona arrives this month with long evenings and perfect light — the season when the built world looks its best, when shadows stretch long and architecture finally has room to breathe. It is a good time to look up from the road, to see what the people who shaped this place were trying to tell us.

From our family to yours, we wish you a month full of discovery — and a fresh eye for the extraordinary design woven into your everyday world.

Happy spring!

Shelly Spence Publisher, Images Arizona

Reimagine Elegance

FROM ORDINARY TO EXTRAORDINARY

PRE-REDESIGN

RUBY PARURE REDESIGN STORY

Created by David Gross for Grace

Renee Gallery

Ruby and Diamond Earrings

2 Oval Red Ruby (8.23 ctw) set with 14 diamonds (4.38 ctw) set in platinum

Ruby and Diamond Bracelet

20 oval shape rubies (21.12 ctw) and and 20 cushion cut rubies (6.13 ctw) and 20 marquis shape diamonds (8.10 ctw) set in platinum

Ruby and Diamond Ring

Emerald cut ruby (3.01 ctw) set with two emerald cut rubies (.82 ctw) and 14 diamonds (1.77 ctw) set in platinum scalloped halo ring

7212 E. Ho Hum Rd. # 7 | Carefree, AZ

Hours: Tue.–Sat. 10 a.m.–5 p.m. By appointment Sun. and Mon.

480.575.8080

Martin Blundell

With bold color and gestural brush strokes, Martin’s contemporary landscape art is captivating and unique.

ARTIST RECEPTION

Thursday, April 16 Wine & appetizers 4–7 p.m.

Grace Renee Gallery

Historic Spanish Village | 7212 E. Ho Hum Rd. # 7 | Carefree, AZ 85377

Hours: Tue.–Sat. 10 a.m.–5 p.m. By appointment Sun. and Mon. 480.575.8080

Serious About Joy Hidden Masters of Museum-Quality Mirth

Writer Joseph J. Airdo

TSanta Barbara jewelry designers Gregoré Morin and Jennifer-Rabe Morin have won more than 30 international awards combining museumquality craftsmanship with playful, natureinspired designs.

he frog sits perfectly still, as frogs do, its opal body catching light from impossible angles. Diamonds stud its webbed feet. A pink sapphire gleams where an eye should be. This is not costume jewelry. This is not whimsy for whimsy’s sake. This is a Santa Barbara husband-and-wife team proving that technical perfection and genuine joy are not mutually exclusive — and that some of America’s most awarded jewelry designers got there by refusing to take themselves seriously, even when working with stones worth more than most cars.

Gregoré and Jennifer-Rabe Morin have quietly amassed more than 30 international design awards, including multiple AGTA Spectrum Best of Show honors and a shelf of MJSA Vision Awards that would make any jeweler envious. Yet their most celebrated pieces feature frogs, spiders perched on leaves, and Buddha figures carved from pink opal. It’s a fascinating duality: old-world discipline married to playful, nature-inspired narratives. And it’s precisely why collectors who appreciate both technical mastery and personality have made them one of the most sought-after design duos working today.

Their path to this rarefied position began in anonymity. For more than a decade, both worked as “hidden masters” — designing pieces that ended up in museums, on red carpets and in private collections around the world, all without their names attached.

Jennifer’s journey began in London, where she received certification from City of London Goldsmiths Hall for fabrication and stone setting — under instructors who were creating pieces for Persian aristocrats. She’d already been at Silverhorn Jewelers for nearly a decade when Gregoré arrived. He worked his way up to head designer at the Santa Barbara gallery, known for its European-trained team and celebrity clientele.

While at Silverhorn, Jennifer earned her Master’s in Fine Art. Founder Michael Ridding purchased and sold the entire collection of gold brooches from her thesis exhibition — recognizing their merit even as they carried the Silverhorn name rather than hers

“Silverhorn was truly a special place,” Jennifer says.

“Founders Michael and Carole Ridding had this remarkable approach,” Gregoré adds. “If they thought a design had merit, they’d give us permission to make it, even if they suspected it might never sell. That’s extraordinarily rare in our industry. Most places we’ve worked, the response was always, ‘You know, it’s lovely, but I don’t think I can sell it, so we’re not going to make it.’”

That creative freedom, combined with the technical demands of working for high-jewelry houses, forged something unusual: artists who could execute at museumcollection levels but weren’t afraid to put a jeweled frog on your shoulder.

“If we designed something for Silverhorn that required a stone that didn’t exist in standard shapes, Michael would simply commission it from cutters in Idar-Oberstein, Germany,” Jennifer explains. “That opened up an entirely different world of design for us — we weren’t limited to classic gem shapes anymore. We carry that philosophy forward today by cutting many of our own gemstones, both by hand and with CNC equipment.”

That attitude — both the creative permission and the material support — permeated the entire workshop.

“It wasn’t just us,” Jennifer continues. “Every jeweler who came through Silverhorn was given that same creative freedom. It allowed all of us to blossom, to create increasingly beautiful work, and to really push ourselves as if we were our own bosses.”

The technical foundation came earlier, built through rigorous apprenticeships that sound almost Victorian in their intensity. Gregoré trained under Swiss, Hong Kong and elite American masters who taught him that “nothing is impossible” — a philosophy he internalized while working in Vancouver beside Hon Chu Wong, whom he calls “probably one of the most excellent technical goldsmiths I’ve ever encountered.” Wong, originally from Hong Kong, brought old-world discipline to the Canadian workshop.

“I was doing limited production pieces for that company, so I might have 10 pieces on my desk that all needed finishing,” he recalls. “Instead of doing it productionline style — filing all the sprues off, then doing all the polishing, then all the setting — I would finish one piece completely. Then I’d look at it and figure out all the

The Finer Arts

Fifty Arizona artists create an exciting experience inside the 4,000 sq. ft. historical Treehouse.

Rustic outside, classical inside, the eclectic gallery celebrates local art with a Open House Art Affaire the 3rd Friday of each month from 5 p.m. - 7 p.m. Join us April 17 and each month in 2026.

6137 E CAVE CREEK RD. | CAVE CREEK | AZ 480-488-2923 | THEFINERARTSGALLERY.COM TUES-SUN 10 A.M. - 5 P.M.

I bow down to nature because just when I think I’ve had the most intelligent idea, I realize that nature created everything before I did, and I’m just now discovering it. Gregoré Morin

mistakes I’d made. On the next piece, I’d fix those mistakes. Then I’d examine that one, identify new mistakes, and correct them on the third piece. And on and on.

“This approach really helped me improve my ability to not make mistakes in the first place — to produce cleaner and cleaner work. My boss didn’t mind because I was just as fast as everybody else in the shop. He didn’t care how I got to the end product, as long as it was good.”

That iterative discipline — complete, examine, correct — now defines how the couple approaches every piece in their Santa Barbara studio, where they design and fabricate everything in-house. But here’s where it gets interesting: They’re not just making jewelry. They’re also performing precision quartz cutting for atomic force microscopes, machines worth millions of dollars that require tolerances far beyond normal jewelry practice.

“When we’re working on components for atomic force microscopes — specifically the Potomac Workhorse models — there’s no design element involved,” Gregoré explains. “The specifications are absolute: a hole here at exactly this diameter and depth, a slot positioned precisely there. There’s no ambiguity.

“Now, jewelry doesn’t require those kinds of tolerances. But the skills you develop from that precision work carry over in profound ways. You learn to research specialized cutters that can achieve what’s being asked. You figure out new approaches to tool pathing: how the cutter needs to move to avoid damaging the material.”

That discipline translates directly into pieces that judges consistently praise for being “finished from every angle” — brooches whose backs are as meticulously detailed as their fronts, rings designed to be appreciated like miniature sculptures rather than flat ornaments.

“I just feel a piece of jewelry is a sculpture — it should be beautiful from every angle,” Jennifer says. “Once you imagine yourself smaller than your jewelry — looking at it like it’s a huge monument — it becomes much easier to see what needs attention. It almost forces you to finish all the small details on every side, rather than just focusing on the parts that face outward.”

Which brings us back to that frog. The 2009 AGTA Spectrum Award-winning brooch combines 18-karat white and yellow gold with layered opals, moonstones and pink sapphires in a fully three-dimensional animal form. It requires complex stone-setting angles and structural engineering in two colors of gold. It’s also, unmistakably, charming.

Natasha Lazarova, jewelry curator and head gemstone expert at Grace Renee Gallery in Carefree, where the couple will appear this month, puts it succinctly: “Gregoré and Jennifer are a rare phenomenon in the art world. You have this Santa Barbara husband-and-wife team creating these delightful, whimsical narratives — frogs, insects, nature scenes — but the engineering behind them is absolutely serious high art.

“They come from a background of working on confidential projects for the world’s most prestigious jewelry houses, and you can see that rigorous discipline in their work. They are likely two of the most awarded designers working in the U.S. today because they’ve mastered a difficult balance: they use flawless, old-world technique to tell stories that are full of joy and humor.”

For Jennifer, whose childhood in Spain included collecting dragonflies and butterflies and arranging them meticulously under glass, the nature focus feels inevitable.

“It starts with awe and admiration — a kind of wanting that beauty to be part of me throughout the day,” she says. “When I was a child in Spain, finding these extraordinary living creatures, seeing how beautiful they were, it was like a beacon coaxing me to try to capture that in an object I could wear and share, to give that same happy feeling to somebody else.”

But the humor? That’s harder to explain, even for Gregoré, who once heard an American poet laureate describe how ideas arrive like tornadoes on her farm — if you don’t run fast enough to catch them, you’re left with only residue.

“Design is often like that for me,” he says. “Sometimes it’s perfect — instant. You have the whole picture. Other times it still needs some polishing around the edges. But often it almost feels like I didn’t do it. Like it wasn’t even me. And yet I know it was, because I was there to see it, to experience it.”

Jennifer offers a more pragmatic explanation rooted in their membership in the American Jewelry Design Council:

“To us, our craft is a form of art. It’s not about economic gain from selling a big sapphire and diamond. It really is an art form for us, and that influences the fact that we’re not concerned with what a design might sell. It’s more about speaking the language that excites us. It’s about paying honor to the design and not dumbing it down just to fit the masses.”

Working as a married couple in the same studio could theoretically create friction, but they’ve developed a system that respects individual vision while leveraging complementary skills. Jennifer, formally trained in fine arts and education, brings strength in form, drawing and composition. Gregoré, with his background in machining and tool-making, excels at technical problem-solving and fabrication.

“Our pieces are really our own — we each design and execute our personal work independently,” Gregoré explains. “When we take on commissioned pieces from other designers that might be entered into shows like Spectrum, the commissioning artist has final say on the design direction.”

Jennifer describes her process as more internal: “I don’t like to be influenced too much — I actually try to do the whole thing myself. But for the CAD part, I’ll ask Gregoré to come in and give me some tips, because he’s far more skilled with that.”

But Gregoré is quick to acknowledge his own blind spots: “I get tunnel vision quite often. I’ll design something that feels like it’s working perfectly to me, but Jennifer will say, ‘Look, this feels off balance.’ And she’s usually right. If she tells me something needs to move or change, I should listen, because I tend to get tunnel vision. I fall in love with what I’m creating, and then obviously that piece can do no wrong in my eyes.”

It’s a partnership that has produced pieces like the Hiruko objet d’art — an 18-karat white and yellow gold

sculptural figure of one of Japan’s Seven Lucky Gods, carved from orange opal with paraiba tourmalines and diamonds — that won both MJSA Design Excellence and Laser Distinction awards simultaneously. Or the Buddha earrings: small engraved sculptures in pink opal with pink tourmaline drops that collectors wear as conversation pieces.

The Santa Barbara connection matters here, too. Like North Scottsdale and Carefree, it’s a landscape-driven, designconscious community where affluent collectors appreciate both natural beauty and artistic craftsmanship. Both environments attract people who view jewelry as wearable sculpture rather than status symbols, who want pieces with personality and provenance.

“An artist observes life, spending time aware of what is going on around him,” Gregoré says. “Every day, I work to make sure my work is extravagant, fun to look at. I bow down to nature because just when I think I’ve had the most intelligent idea, I realize that nature created everything before I did, and I’m just now discovering it.”

Jennifer’s approach is more direct: “My objective is to create beautiful shapes with rare materials so that people look at them with wonder and joy.”

At Grace Renee Gallery later this month, visitors will have the rare opportunity to meet these two artists and see firsthand how technical perfection and genuine delight can coexist in the same piece. The frog will be there, of course. So will several new pieces showcasing techniques they’ve been perfecting, including casting and anodizing aluminum into brilliant colors — something generally considered semiimpossible with castable grades.

“We’ve managed to break through that limitation,” Gregoré says, with the quiet confidence of someone who has spent decades being told things are impossible, then doing them anyway.

The work, ultimately, speaks for itself. Thirty-plus international awards. Museum placements. Red-carpet appearances. But also: frogs, spiders, Buddha figures. Important jewelry that doesn’t take itself too seriously. Technical mastery in service of joy.

“The work is the important part, not us,” Gregoré says. “We have to step back almost like a writer does when they talk about how characters develop themselves — how you’ve got to listen to the character, what the character wants to do. It’s the same thing with the work. The work is the important thing, and it needs to live. That’s what you're doing: giving it life so it can go out there and exist on its own, without us.”

Community

THROUGH APRIL 19

TEACHING ARTISTS

Scottsdale Arts Learning & Innovation showcases the creative dialogue between professional teaching artists from XICO, Inc. and the youth they mentored from the Boys & Girls Clubs of Greater Scottsdale. Featuring works by Saray Martiny, Martin Moreno, Agustin Vargas, Timothea Haider and Bronson Soza alongside their students’ art, the exhibition explores themes of place, sustainability and community. Free. 11 a.m.–5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday; noon–5 p.m. Sunday. Center Space gallery at Scottsdale Center for the Performing Arts, 7380 E. Second St., Scottsdale. 480499-8587; scottsdalearts.org

THROUGH

APRIL 25

KEN LUDWIG’S TREASURE ISLAND

Don Bluth Front Row Theatre presents an epic adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic novel, bringing high-seas adventure to the stage. $38+; discounts available. See website for times. Don Bluth Front Row Theatre, 8989 E. Via Linda, Suite 118, Scottsdale. 480-314-0841; donbluthfrontrowtheatre.com

APRIL 3–JUNE 14

Writer Joseph J. Airdo

NANCY KRAVETZ: COLOR FORMS THE DAY

Scottsdale Arts Learning & Innovation presents a new exhibition by Nancy Kravetz, whose career spans seven decades of exploring how form and color create meaning. Moving from early representational landscapes to the abstract style she developed after meeting artist Dorothy Fratt, Kravetz uses color as a messenger for her lived experiences. Free. 11 a.m.–5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday; noon–5 p.m. Sunday. ArtReach Space at Scottsdale Center for the Performing Arts, 7380 E. Second St., Scottsdale. 480-499-8587; scottsdalearts.org

APRIL

8–12

ARIZONA BIKE WEEK

The 29th annual motorcycle rally returns to WestWorld for five days of riding, music and entertainment. The event features the Arena Wars Fighting Series, stunt shows, a vendor showcase and the Used Bike Corral. This year’s concert lineup includes Black Stone Cherry, Jason Bonham’s Led Zeppelin Evening, Cody Jinks and Ted Nugent. See website for prices and times. WestWorld of Scottsdale, 16601 N. Pima Road, Scottsdale. 480644-8191; azbikeweek.com

APRIL

9

SAMARA JOY

Presented by Arizona Musicfest, the three-time Grammy Award winner brings her rich, velvety vocals to the stage, channeling the spirit of jazz legends like Sarah Vaughan and Betty Carter. Known for her masterful interpretations of standards and her gospel-rooted technique, Joy performs selections from her acclaimed albums, including her breakout “Linger Awhile.” $64+. 7:30 p.m. Highlands Church, 9050 E. Pinnacle Peak Road, Scottsdale. 480422-8449; azmusicfest.org

APRIL

9–19

PHOENIX FILM FESTIVAL

The 26th annual festival brings filmmakers and movie lovers together for 11 days of storytelling and community celebration. The event features more than 250 films, filmmaking seminars, parties and student workshops. New competition categories this year include Music Videos and Deaf Directed Shorts, joining returning favorites like the Party Pavilion and Kids Day. $19+. See website for schedule. Harkins Scottsdale 101, 7000 E. Mayo Blvd., Phoenix. 480-5133195; phoenixfilmfestival.com

APRIL

9–26

IS MAN NO MORE THAN THIS?

The Theatre Artists Studio presents two plays exploring one truth, running in rotating repertory. Tim Ashby’s “Same Moon” contrasts a war correspondent’s rooftop toast with the suffering just miles away, while Amy Hartman’s “Mazel” draws from Holocaust survivors’ memoirs to explore the struggle for understanding and forgiveness. See website for prices and times. The Theatre Artists Studio, 12406 N. Paradise Village Parkway E., Scottsdale. 602-765-0120; thestudiophx.org

APRIL

11

THE ARTRAGEOUS GALA

Scottsdale Arts closes its golden anniversary season with a spectacular tribute to five decades of creativity and innovation. This gala honors the patrons, artists and champions who have shaped the organization’s history while celebrating the future of arts in the city. The evening includes acrobatic entertainment, music, cocktails and a special groundbreaking ceremony for the renovation of the Stage 2 theater. See website for price and time. Scottsdale Center for the Performing Arts, 7380 E. Second St., Scottsdale. 480-874-4662; scottsdalearts.org

APRIL

11

THE BRITISH INVASION YEARS

Presented by Arizona Musicfest, this multimedia concert experience relives the dynamic era when British bands like the Beatles and the Rolling Stones transformed the music scene, alongside the American artists who responded with hits of their own. $47+. 2 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. Highlands Church, 9050 E. Pinnacle Peak Road, Scottsdale. 480422-8449; azmusicfest.org

APRIL 16

ARTIST RECEPTION: MARTIN BLUNDELL

Meet Utah artist Martin Blundell, whose landscape oil paintings transform the natural world through vibrant color and bold impasto brushwork. Blundell’s compositions showcase masterful design sensibility honed through decades of fine art practice across multiple mediums. Free. 4–7 p.m. Grace Renee Gallery, Historic Spanish Village, 7212 E. Ho Road, Carefree. 480-575-8080; gracereneegallery.com

Community

APRIL 19

FILM CLASSICS AND MORE

The Phoenix Brass Collective closes its season with a dynamic performance featuring a large brass and percussion ensemble under the direction of Jeff Quamo. The program includes a selection of iconic movie favorites alongside other cinematic-sounding scores composed specifically for brass, showcasing the group’s diverse repertoire and powerful sound. $30. 4 p.m. St. Barnabas on the Desert Episcopal Church, 6715 N. Mockingbird Lane, Paradise Valley. 480948-5560; phxbrass.com

APRIL 24–25

GREGORE AND JENNIFER-RABE MORIN

Meet two of America’s finest jewelry designers, a Santa Barbara husband-andwife team who reinterpret nature with humor and artistry. Each piece marries technical mastery with whimsical vision, creating singular works where precision craftsmanship transforms the natural world into wearable sculpture. Free. 10 a.m.–5 p.m. Grace Renee Gallery, Historic Spanish Village, 7212 E. Ho Road, Carefree. 480-575-8080; gracereneegallery.com

APRIL

12 AND 19

AMERICAN ROAD TRIP: SONGS FROM EVERY MILE

Writer Joseph J. Airdo

The Orpheus Male Chorus of Phoenix hits the open road with a concert series celebrating the music, stories and shared spirit of the nation. Supported by the National Endowment for the Arts, the program weaves together patriotic anthems, folk favorites and iconic hits ranging from “Route 66” to “Rocky Mountain High.” The chorus connects with the audience through a singalong and a moving tribute to the Armed Services. $20+; discounts available.

3 p.m. April 12 at Pinnacle Presbyterian Church, 25150 N. Pima Road, Scottsdale; April 19 at Camelback Bible Church, 3900 E. Stanford Drive, Paradise Valley. 602-699-4556; orpheus.org

APRIL 24–26

JUNK IN THE TRUNK VINTAGE MARKET

Junk in the Trunk Vintage Market returns to WestWorld, transforming more than 120,000 square feet into a gathering place for vintage enthusiasts and treasure hunters. The event features over 160 handpicked vendors from across the country, offering everything from antique furniture and architectural salvage to handmade jewelry and clothing. $10+ 4–9 p.m. Friday; 9 a.m.–4 p.m. Saturday; 10 a.m.–3 p.m. Sunday. WestWorld of Scottsdale, 16601 N. Pima Road, Scottsdale. 480-644-8191; junkinthetrunkvintagemarket.com

APRIL 24–26

RAGTIME: A THEATRICAL CONCERT EXPERIENCE

Presented by Arizona Musicfest, this production celebrates the Tony Awardwinning musical’s soaring score of ragtime, blues and jazz. Based on E.L. Doctorow’s novel, the concert features Broadway stars including Mamie Parris, Justin Austin and Ta’Nika Gibson alongside the Musicfest Pops Ensemble. $79.50+. See website for times. Herberger Theater Center, 222 E. Monroe St., Phoenix. 602-252-8497; azmusicfest.org

APRIL 24–MAY 3

TARZAN: THE STAGE MUSICAL

Shine Theatre presents an adventurous, family-friendly production featuring a 39-member cast led by Noah Weaver as the iconic title character and Grace Matejsek as Jane. Accompanied by a 12-piece live orchestra performing Phil Collins’ expressive score, the staging brings the jungle to life through stylized animal movement, large-scale puppetry and specialized aerial elements developed in partnership with Gecko Climbing Gym. $20+. See website for times. Highlands Church, 9050 E. Pinnacle Peak Road, Scottsdale. shinetheatre.org

APRIL 26

SPRING CONCERT

The Women’s Orchestra of Arizona presents its season finale, celebrating the contributions of women to classical music. The program features “Symphony No. 2” by 19th century French composer Louise Farrenc, alongside a winning piece by Heather Price. Free. 3 p.m. North Scottsdale United Methodist Church, 11735 N. Scottsdale Road, Scottsdale. womens-orchestra-arizona.org

APRIL 26

STAGE TO STUDIO

The Sonoran Desert Chorale presents a journey through musical favorites from the stage to the studio, featuring a dynamic mix of genres ranging from rock anthems to Broadway classics. The program includes the soul-stirring beauty of “What a Wonderful World,” the infectious energy of Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” and Lerner and Loewe’s “I Could Have Danced All Night.” $25; discounts available. 3 p.m. Camelback Bible Church, 3900 E. Stanford Drive, Paradise Valley. 480305-4538; sonorandesertchorale.org

APRIL 30 BLOOM

The Phoenix Chorale makes its debut at the MIM Music Theater with a onenight-only program celebrating renewal, travel and the joy of spring. A bouquet of 10 singers from the Grammy-winning ensemble presents an intimate concert curated and conducted by Assistant Conductor Tom Peterson. The repertoire traverses the globe and centuries, featuring lyrics by Shakespeare and E.E. Cummings alongside Italian madrigals and English dances. $51.50+. 7:30 p.m. The Musical Instrument Museum, 4725 E. Mayo Blvd., Phoenix. 480-478-6000; mim.org

MAY 3

BEETHOVEN’S THRILLING 5TH SYMPHONY

The Scottsdale Philharmonic presents one of the most recognizable and powerful works in the classical canon. Beethoven’s “Symphony No. 5,” with its iconic four-note opening motif representing “fate knocking at the door,” takes the audience on a dramatic journey from struggle to triumphant victory. $20+; discounts available. 4 p.m. La Casa de Cristo Lutheran Church, 6300 E. Bell Road, Scottsdale. 480-951-6077; scottsdalephilharmonic.com

Look down into the paint of a car beneath a standard recessed garage light and you’ll see it: the bulb, reflected. A perfect circle of interruption in the finish, disrupting every curve the designer intended. Most people never notice. C.P. Drewett noticed immediately — and the question of what to do about it says everything about how he thinks.

The answer, for Drewett, is canvas. Light shot across a stretched surface until it becomes soft, allencompassing, ambient. No hotspots. No direct reflections. Just a glow that allows the body of the car to read exactly as its designers intended — every plane and crease and intentional line visible at once. It’s a detail that matters only to someone who understands that a serious automotive collection isn’t storage. It’s art. And art deserves proper light.

That understanding — that the spaces we inhabit are expressions of who we are, that every technical decision is also a philosophical one — has driven Drewett’s work since he arrived in Phoenix in 1993 fresh from Louisiana State University’s architecture program. Over the past three decades, the founder and principal of Drewett Works has become one of the North Valley’s most consequential architects, shifting the region’s luxury residential language from heavy Mediterranean enclosure to a transparent, horizontal modernism that doesn’t merely sit upon the Sonoran Desert but enters into conversation with it.

He is also, it should be said, not what you’d expect. Before the architecture, there was the military — a 14-year career in the Louisiana Army National Guard that ended at the rank of captain, with engineering school at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, and a platoon leader’s experience building roads,

C.P. Drewett's Desert

Modernism Transforms How the North Valley Lives

Home Is Where the Art Is

Writer Joseph J. Airdo // Photographer Loralei Lazurek

bridges, and structures in the field. There was a liver donation in 2001, when Drewett gave 80% of his organ to save his father-in-law’s life in what was only the third living-donor liver transplant in Mayo Clinic Hospital’s history. There was an Iron Chef battle at a Louisiana country club, which he won. There are Bach cantatas, sung in a three-octave range, and an orphanage in Uganda he helped build with his own hands. The man contains multitudes. The architecture, it turns out, contains all of them.

“It looked very production-oriented,” Drewett says of the Valley he encountered in 1993.

“What I felt was missing were districts — art districts, entertainment districts. It was sort of uncontrollable sprawl at the moment.”

But the landscape held him.

“Coming from the South, it was so remarkably

clean here — pride of ownership, everything felt renewed, like a great wide-open playing field,” Drewett explains.

He would spend the next three decades trying to play it well.

His early career coincided with Silverleaf’s development — and the architectural mandate that came with it. DMB Development’s guidelines for the community specified Spanish and Mediterranean Revival styles: stucco exteriors, red-tiled roofs, grand archways, sprawling fountain courtyards, a deliberate transplant of European old-world character onto desert soil. Drewett worked within it. He is careful to note this: he was not an outsider rejecting the prevailing style but a practitioner fluent enough in its vocabulary to eventually argue for something better.

Named to Phoenix Home & Garden’s Masters of the Southwest in 2024, C.P. Drewett has built a practice — and a portfolio — defined by one consistent imperative: peel it back until only the essence remains.

I love people more than I love architecture. C.P. Drewett

“I’ve had the fortune of mostly curating modern architecture, though I’ve definitely done a good bit of work in Silverleaf, which is the interpretation of a sort of desert-oriented Mediterranean architecture,” he says. “That was something of a pre-mandate.”

The shift came as Phoenix grew up around itself. As museum districts and cultural cores emerged, something in the city’s collective eye began to sharpen. People’s expectations expanded.

“People’s awareness of architecture grows beyond just reaching for the word ‘contemporary’ — which I feel gets a little misused,” Drewett says. “Once we got grounded with these cultural centers, people started free-thinking and realizing that modern architecture really had its place here — and how connected it can be to our local topography. The metaphorical alignment could go on and on. It just makes so much sense with our landscape.”

He draws the line clearly.

“I think probably in the mid-1990s I really felt thae tide start to turn, shortly after I got here,” he says. “And by the early 2000s, I wasn’t nudging people toward modern anymore. They were gravitating there on their own.”

The Valley’s relationship with the automobile made the next evolution almost inevitable. Scottsdale’s position as home to Barrett-Jackson and a constellation of collector car culture — favorable climate, no corrosive salt air, no flood risk — has drawn some of the world’s most serious automotive enthusiasts to the North Valley. They arrived with their collections and a question architects had rarely been asked: how do we live with these things properly?

“Our clientele have really, increasingly, come to us with requests for spaces that can house and celebrate their collections,” Drewett says.

The collector car space is now among Drewett Works’ signature design challenges — and Drewett approaches it the way he approaches every problem: purpose first. Who is this collector? Are the cars museum pieces, static and pristine, or are they driven regularly? The answer determines everything: the circulation logic, the door systems, the relationship between the garage and the motor court.

On the Boards

Architect C.P. Drewett’s ambitions are no longer limited to individual residences. He has recently launched a development company — an extension of what he describes as a lifelong interest in designing not just homes but the community fabric around them.

“I’ve always loved helping craft and create vision for communities,” he says. “I’m excited to bring some renewed thinking to how we do our planning and how we assemble the fabric we live in.”

Closer to home, he’s watching Old Town Scottsdale’s ongoing transformation with particular enthusiasm.

“There’s been some push and pull about what needs to change and what doesn’t, but all in all, it’s a bit of a renaissance,” he says. “Some really great projects are coming online, and we have some interesting things coming ourselves.”

Drewett Works holds active licenses in nine states — Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Hawaii, Iowa, Massachusetts, Nevada, Texas, and Utah — with international work extending into Mexico.

Drewett’s design philosophy begins not with materials or form but with the people who will inhabit the finished space. “I love people more than I love architecture,” he says — a statement that sounds like humility but functions, in practice, as a precise design methodology.

The business of loving people and creating space that’s relatable for them means you really need to be a student of your clients

C.P. Drewett

“There are really a few different approaches, depending on the client,” he explains. “There’s the approach where the car is essentially a museum piece — static, no fluids, never driven. And then there’s the driver who actually uses every car in the collection. So movement is front and center: how do you navigate around the space without dodging and having to move things out of the way?”

The fenestration options alone reflect how seriously Drewett takes the design problem. Drivable sliding door tracks. Guillotine glass. Hangar-style doors borrowed from aviation architecture.

“The way the space opens and connects to the exterior — that’s a great moment to celebrate, just like how we live,” he says. “Indoor-outdoor space is such a premium for us here, and opening up the auto collection to the motor court, having people over, entertaining — that whole experience is what it turns into.”

Which brings us back to the light. The canvas system that eliminates the recessed bulb’s reflection isn’t merely a technical solution — it’s a philosophical position. The car deserves to be studied. Its design deserves to be read in full.

“When the light is ambient and far-extending, it really allows you to study the car — to see how the body movement and all the intentionality of the design actually reads,” Drewett says.

The same precision governs natural light throughout his homes. The Sonoran Desert’s sun is the region’s greatest asset and its most demanding engineering problem, and Drewett has developed an exacting vocabulary for managing it. North light is soft and calming — ideal for certain interior spaces. South light is handled with horizontal projections that intercept the high summer arc while admitting lower winter sun. East and west are the difficult exposures, the sun arriving at its most intense right at the horizon line.

“You can’t combat that with a roofline,” he says flatly. “You can’t extend it far enough. Instead, you use a vertical panel.”

When a site offers no good southern exposure at all, Drewett goes vertical.

“You lift it up — really pay attention to the Z axis — and you can allow remarkable light in through clerestories,” he explains. “When a space is largely shaded at the human level and then you have this halo of light from above, it’s really something.”

The material palette that holds all of this together — limestone, rift-cut oak, copper, steel — is governed by a principle Drewett calls hierarchy. Not symmetry. Not visual balance in the conventional sense. A deliberate ranking of materials according to the spaces and views they serve, with a hero material anchoring each zone and a supporting cast stepping down from it.

Before the architecture came the military: Drewett served 14 years in the Louisiana Army National Guard, reaching the rank of Captain and commanding engineering units that built roads, bridges, and structures in the field. The discipline, he says, never left.

“When I’m designing, I’m trying to be reductive — peel it back, peel it back, peel it back — until I find the bare essence of the solution I’m striving for,” he says. “It’s not about needing more stone on this portion of the house for balance. It’s about understanding the solvency of what each material is doing, where and why.”

The logic, once established, becomes self-perpetuating.

“Once you create that vocabulary and establish clear rules of engagement for the materials, they start placing themselves,” Drewett says. “And once that logic is founded, people experience it — they may not know tangibly what’s driving it, but they feel it.”

That feeling — the sense of being held by a space without being able to articulate why — is the closest Drewett comes to describing what he’s ultimately after. Ask him what daily life feels like inside one of his homes and he deflects, characteristically, toward the people who live there rather than the structures they inhabit.

“I love people more than I love architecture,” he says.

It sounds like humility. It is, in fact, a design philosophy.

“The business of loving people and creating space that’s relatable for them means you really need to be a student of your clients,” Drewett continues. “The relatability of the space comes from having spent so much time studying my clients, learning their lives and how they live, and then knowing I have the freedom to express that spatially. There’s a sense of belonging in the architecture. It’s embracing.”

That embrace is expanding. Drewett has recently launched his own development company — “I’ve always loved helping craft and create vision for communities,” he says — and is watching Old Town Scottsdale with the particular attention of someone who spent three decades shaping the Valley’s edges and is now focused on its center.

“Our city is at the precipice of growing up,” he says. “We’re seeing an increasingly refined clientele — people with very particular palettes — and a lot of relocation. Some really unique families are moving to the Valley.”

It is, in its way, the same thing he said when he arrived in 1993: the playing field is wide open. The difference is that now he has spent 30 years learning exactly how to play it — and the light, finally, is right.

drewettworks.com

For three decades, architect C.P. Drewett has quietly shifted the North Valley’s architectural language from Mediterranean enclosure to transparent desert modernism — one precise, philosophical detail at a time.

photo essay

Photographer Tevin Jones

Through long exposures that transform rushing water into silk, North Phoenix photographer Tevin Jones reveals the quiet power of Arizona’s rarest element.

Current Affairs

In Arizona, water is both architect and sculptor. Over millennia, it carves canyons, shapes stone, and writes stories across the desert that only those who seek it will ever read. For photographer Tevin Jones, these rivers and streams represent something more profound than scenic beauty — they’re visual meditations on time, impermanence, and the quiet power of persistence.

This collection of images transforms Arizona’s hidden waterways into silk and light. Through long exposures that blur rushing currents into painterly strokes, Jones captures not just what these places look like, but how they feel. Each photograph becomes a study in contrasts: the permanence of stone against the motion of water, the scarcity of our desert climate against the abundance of these rare riparian corridors, the chaos of rapids rendered into serene, milky flows.

The technique is deliberate. By allowing his camera’s shutter to remain open for seconds at a time, Jones compresses countless moments into single frames where water becomes ethereal, almost otherworldly. What the eye sees as turbulence, the lens translates into tranquility.

“I like the idea of water slowly carving through the landscape and shaping it over time, and that’s what I try to show with the movement of the water,” Jones says.

One of his favorite images in the collection — an intimate composition from West Fork — captures just this: a sinuous channel carved through rock, water flowing through its ancient path. It’s a portrait of patience, of geologic time made visible.

“When I look at it, I think about how over hundreds, thousands, or even millions of years, that channel has been carved out,” Jones reflects. “There’s a beauty in the fact that our time here is so short — that in the grand scheme of things, we’re so insignificant.”

The crown jewel of this collection came during a predawn expedition to Cibecue Falls — a journey that required leaving at 2 a.m. to secure a permit and arrive before sunrise. His wife, newly pregnant at the time, couldn’t make the strenuous hike, so Jones brought his mother instead.

“It’s not even the photograph of the actual falls that’s my favorite,” he admits. “It’s this image of beautiful reflected light bouncing off the canyon walls. This canyon is unlike any other I’ve been to in Arizona. At just the right time, the water turns gold.”

They had the canyon to themselves that morning — a rare gift of solitude in Arizona’s increasingly discovered wild places.

It’s the way that light and water interact that really brings me peace and inspiration. They’re two different elements that, when done properly, create some of the most stunning images possible. Tevin Jones

I like the idea of water slowly carving through the landscape and shaping it over time, and that’s what I try to show with the movement of the water. Tevin Jones

I’m always drawn to water — partly because I was born and raised in the desert, but also because I’m really drawn to the motion of it. Tevin Jones

Meet the Photographer

Tevin Jones never really left home. After growing up in North Phoenix and attending Paradise Valley High School, he and his wife recently purchased their second house just 2 miles from where he was raised. But his roots run deeper than geography — they’re woven into the landscape itself.

“I grew up spending time outdoors all over Arizona. I love this state,” Jones says. “I’ve been doing photography on the side since I was about 11, and I fell in love with landscape photography because Arizona is such a beautiful place.”

His journey to photography began with a single frozen moment: his stepsister photographing him playing basketball when he was 10 years old.

“I’ll never forget: She had a film camera, and she took a picture of me playing basketball with one of my friends. I was just fascinated by how you could capture a moment like that,” he recalls.

By day, Jones works as a strength and conditioning coach, programming workouts for a gym near Arcadia. But his creative practice — whether photography, drawing or athletics — serves a deeper purpose.

“I’ve always had trouble sleeping. My mind’s always running. I can never really shut it off,” he explains. “The one way I’ve found to shut it off is through some sort of creative endeavor where I’m so focused. It’s the one time I have peace in my mind. And I’ve noticed that a lot of my photos are geared toward that: toward some kind of peaceful, inner peace that I want to portray to the world.”

Now a father to a 10-month-old son, Jones has adapted his practice to family life. Once-a-month camping trips with a trailer have replaced spontaneous road trips, but the mission remains unchanged.

“I hope my images inspire people to protect these places,” he says, noting the utmost importance of always packing out whatever you bring into an area.

It’s a photographer’s prayer: that beauty might inspire not just wonder but stewardship.

High Rotation

The Hyatt Regency Phoenix Marks 50 Years Above a City It Helped Build

High above the Phoenix skyline, a dining room turns. It completes one full rotation every hour — a slow, steady circuit that has been tracking the city’s transformation since 1976. From The Compass atop the Hyatt Regency Phoenix, mountain ridgelines appear and recede, freeways unspool toward distant suburbs, and the towers that now populate its sightlines — arenas, office blocks, residential high-rises that were unimaginable when these windows first faced an open desert sky — glide past like a film reel that never reaches its end. At golden hour, amber light crosses warm wood tabletops and glass stemware. The view has changed. The room turns on.

The Compass is among the few remaining rotating restaurants in the United States, and it has had a bird’s-eye view of Phoenix for 50 years.

Jerry Herschede was there from the first day it opened. The recently retired food server, who spent her entire career at The Compass, still recalls employees donning cowboy hats and bandanas as the curtain rose on a business that never closes.

“People were scurrying around in preparation for the grand opening and our first big convention, The American National Cattlemen’s Association,” she recalls. The personality of this landmark, she adds, is “one of caring and concern for all — providing a place to feel safe and welcome.”

On the day it opened, the hotel was one of the tallest structures in a city that still had more cotton fields than skyscrapers on its periphery. Its spare geometry — angular concrete and glass, Brutalist in its structural honesty — was met with some public derision at the time. The building carries notable architectural pedigree: it was designed by Charles Luckman and Associates, the midcentury firm behind New York City’s Madison Square Garden and, closer to home, the original Phoenix Civic Plaza and Symphony Hall in 1972, and the 27-story First National Bank building, now Wells Fargo Plaza.

“Our guests frequently mention how much they enjoy the unique design and architecture of our hotel,” says Eric Fink, the general manager. “They love that it is such a recognizable landmark in the city skyline. As you ride the glass eleva-

This landmark was my second home for 50 years. It makes me feel proud and so honored to be able to say it. I was blessed to work here and the memories I’ve made will be with me forever. Jerry Herschede

tors up floor by floor, the desert landscape recedes and surrounding buildings shrink; then you step into The Compass. It really is an experience in itself — it brings on a sense of discovery.”

More than an architectural statement, the hotel was a calculated civic bet — a necessary addition to attract convention traffic to what was then a sparse, unfinished downtown. Over the years, its ballrooms and boardrooms became home to wedding parties, symphony fundraisers and visiting delegations, helping make downtown Phoenix a viable destination. By 1980, Phoenix had grown to the ninth-largest city in the country, pulling high-rise office and residential towers, shopping, entertainment and sports venues in its wake.

“When you look back to 1976 and see what the down town area has become today, we are very proud to know that we played a large role in the expansion of this city,” Fink says. “As new development expands and larger or taller structures continue to surround us, we remain at the epicenter of it all and have become a central gathering place for the community. The city has grown up around us and we have grown with it.”

Herschede has watched much of that growth from the same vantage point — the proliferation of towers, the pedestrians filling streets that once emptied at sundown.

“Downtown finally feels like a big city; there’s lots more hustle and bustle,” she observes. “What feels the same is

definitely the elevators and always the view — even though buildings block some of what was once unobstructed.”

A standout memory: the hotel’s role as a hub during the first Super Bowl held in the Phoenix area in 1996.

To mark its golden anniversary, the hotel’s team dug into the archives — unearthing the original handwritten guest registry from the Cattlemen’s Association, colorful brochures promising “a full city block of excitement,” and photographs of a massive brass sunburst suspended above purple and red lounge couches in the atrium, employees outfitted in sunset-hued uniforms of yellow, orange and red.

The details that surface from those archives are small but illuminating. Newspaper clippings describe civic gatherings of the city’s movers and shakers; old menus list appetizers and entrées in tones both formal and faintly Midwestern — Quiche Lorraine at $3.95, prime rib with Yorkshire pudding at $15.95. Typefaces and prices now read like artifacts of another era.

“I think celebrating this incredible milestone has given us the opportunity to look back over the past half-century to see how far we have come and to lean into our history more, so we can connect our guests to the place through storytelling,” Fink says.

Some of that storytelling is edible. Items that longtime guests have requested for decades — creamy eggplant bisque topped with shrimp, orange cornbread with smoked honey butter — have returned to the menu for the anniversary, sharing space with a contemporary selection: Arizona-sourced ribeye, coffee-rubbed duck breast, burrata and whipped ricotta with pistachios and honey, alongside Phoenix’s own Noble bread.

Just as the menu has evolved, so has the city beyond those windows. Brutalism, once dismissed as cold and institutional, is now the subject of preservation campaigns and design retrospectives — the same aesthetic that made the Hyatt unfashionable for two decades now makes it relevant again. The hotel remains central to downtown’s economic choreography, its proximity to the convention center, stadium, shopping and arts venues placing it at

the intersection of whatever Phoenix is becoming next.

“Our guests continue to enjoy the iconic Compass,” Herschede says. “The stories that live there are the stories of our guests over the years — who’ve celebrated many special occasions in their lives.”

After 50 years, she knows those stories as well as anyone.

“This landmark was my second home for 50 years,” she continues. “It makes me feel proud and so honored to be able to say it. I was blessed to work here and the memories I’ve made will be with me forever.”

phoenix.regency.hyatt.com

Writer Joseph J. Airdo

Building Blocks An Architectural Field Guide

You’ve driven past them a thousand times — the copper shimmer on Central Avenue, the inverted pyramid hovering over Tempe, the mushroom columns sheltering a bank on Camelback. But when was the last time you actually looked? The metro Phoenix area functions as an inadvertent open-air museum, where midcentury pioneers and contemporary visionaries left behind a vocabulary of concrete, steel, and shadow that speaks directly to our desert climate. This is your field guide to the sculptural language written into our daily commute.

HOTEL VALLEY HO

The low-slung resort on Main Street in Old Town Scottsdale represents a turning point in the city’s identity. Before Edward Varney’s 1956 Hotel Valley Ho, Scottsdale hospitality meant dude ranches and Old West kitsch. This design introduced Jetsons-style glamour for Hollywood stars seeking privacy. Precast concrete breeze blocks featuring abstract arrow patterns create the building’s signature texture, with constantly shifting shadows as the sun moves. The same facade looks entirely different at dawn versus dusk, the shadows reshaping the building’s appearance throughout the day. The guest room windows cant downward at an angle, a geometric trick that lets guests see out at night without interior lights reflecting back, while blocking brutal daytime heat.

After decades as a declining Ramada Inn and near-demolition in 2001, the 2005 rehabilitation finally realized Varney’s original vision, adding the seven-story tower he’d sketched but never built. The hotel’s lobby, ZuZo restaurant and bar areas remain open to the public — visitors can experience the breeze blocks, ribbon balconies and central courtyard without booking a room.

PHOENIX FINANCIAL CENTER

The 19-story tower at Central Avenue and Osborn Road earned its “Punchcard Building” nickname through architectural serendipity. W.A. Sarmiento designed the narrow vertical slot windows in 1964 for solar shading, but their rhythmic pattern accidentally mimicked the punch cards that fed IBM mainframes. The complex anchors Central Avenue through contrasting geometries: a curved tower (subtly concave on one face, convex on the other) paired with twin rotundas ringed by inverted parabolic arches. Gold-anodized aluminum creates a metallic shimmer that shifts as the sun moves — this building changes color by the hour.

Currently under redevelopment as a boutique hotel and residential project, the exterior remains the most recognizable silhouette in the Midtown skyline. The building is best viewed from the Valley Metro light rail stop at Central and Osborn, where the curves and gold shimmer project pure 1960s optimism about what corporate architecture could be.

The metro Phoenix area functions as an inadvertent open-air museum, where midcentury pioneers and contemporary visionaries left behind a vocabulary of concrete, steel and shadow that speaks directly to our desert climate.

ASU MUSIC BUILDING

The circular, tiered structure adjacent to Gammage Auditorium solves an architectural challenge: how do you build next to a Frank Lloyd Wright masterpiece without embarrassing yourself? William Wesley Peters — Wright’s son-in-law — answered that question with contextual wit in 1970. He adopted Wright’s circular geometry and “Desert Rose” stucco but inverted the form. Where Gammage spreads horizontally, the Music Building stacks vertically in wedding-cake tiers. The decorative metal latticework wrapping each level in turquoise and gold adds playful ornamentation that Gammage would never tolerate — it’s the difference between the master’s restraint and the apprentice’s exuberance.

Curving elevated walkways connect the buildings, creating an architectural conversation across the lawn. The structure houses Katzin Concert Hall, the massive Fritts Organ and hundreds of soundproof practice rooms. The building is best viewed from the Gammage lawn at sunset when the Desert Rose stucco glows. The Music Library is open to visitors during academic hours.

FARMERS & STOCKMENS BANK

The sleek glass pavilion at the southwest corner of Central Avenue and Camelback Road remains the Valley’s purest argument for why glass can work in 115-degree heat — if you understand shadow.

William Pereira’s 1951 design floats a massive flat roof over walls that dissolve the boundary between banking hall and street. Deep overhangs create shadow lines that protect the floor-to-ceiling glass while maintaining the illusion of weightlessness. But here’s the genius move: rough-hewn Arizona sandstone walls slice through the glass envelope, running continuously from the exterior plaza into the interior without pause, as if the desert floor itself had been pulled through the building.

When it opened in 1951, this intersection marked the northern edge of the city, gateway to the agricultural belt. The design proved cattle barons and cotton farmers could conduct business in buildings as sleek as anything in New York. The building now houses professional offices. Visitors walking the perimeter on Central Avenue can watch how the steel-framed glass reflects the northern mountain ranges, with the transparent walls offering clear views of the original stone planes from the sidewalk.

CHASE BANK

At the corner of 44th Street and Camelback Road, Frank Henry’s 1969 bank branch reads less like a financial institution and more like a grove of concrete trees. The design employs eight massive dendriform columns textured with exposed quartz aggregate that catches afternoon light like crushed diamonds. The columns taper outward as they rise, supporting a roof that extends far beyond the recessed glass walls, creating deep, cool shadow that makes brutalist fortress architecture feel protective rather than oppressive.

Walter Bimson, the visionary behind Valley National Bank, believed branches should be civic sculpture, not utilitarian vaults. For the affluent Arcadia corridor, he commissioned this masterpiece. The deep overhangs invite pedestrians to walk right up to the columns and examine the sparkling quartz texture. Inside, during normal banking hours, visitors can see the coffered ceiling — a waffle grid of geometric precision that appears to float overhead.

TEMPE MUNICIPAL BUILDING

The geometric form hovering over the sunken plaza at Fifth Street in downtown Tempe is one of the few realized inverted pyramids in the world. Michael Goodwin’s 1971 design doesn’t just account for the Arizona sun — it makes solar geometry the entire concept. The 45-degree angle of the exterior walls is precise engineering: during summer, the building shades itself; in winter, lower-angled sun penetrates and warms the interior. The structure expands from roughly 2,000 square feet at ground level to 10,000 square feet at the top, creating a form that defies gravity while proving sustainability can be sculptural.

The genius appears at pedestrian level. The “ground” floor is actually a bridge — the true base is a sunken garden surrounded by lush vegetation that contrasts beautifully with the steel structure hovering above. Solar bronze glass reflects the desert sky. Separate concrete towers house the stairs and elevators, connected by bridges that keep the pyramid’s form pure. Visitors can walk through the sunken garden and experience standing beneath a building that appears to float, making this Tempe’s most photogenic landmark.

FIRST CHRISTIAN CHURCH

The diamond-shaped church complex on Seventh Avenue just south of Glendale Avenue is a Frank Lloyd Wright design that Wright never saw built. In 1950, he drew plans for a Southwest Christian Seminary that went bankrupt before construction. Twenty years later, William Wesley Peters — Wright’s son-in-law — retrieved the blueprints from the Taliesin archives and adapted them for this church site. The diamond-grid geometry rejects every right angle, creating sharp corners and prow-like edges that feel indigenous to the landscape. The 77-foot triangular campanile stands detached from the sanctuary, a threesided lantern tower supported by open pillars that allow desert air to pass through.

Wright’s signature “desert masonry” technique is on full display: rough native stones placed in forms with concrete poured around them, creating walls that mimic the variegated texture of desert geology. The teal roof color comes from copper developing its natural patina, serving as a neighborhood landmark. The church welcomes visitors during Sunday services and frequently participates in Modern Phoenix architectural tours. Inside, stained glass inserts cast jewel-toned light into the diamondshaped sanctuary.

SCOTTSDALE MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART

The iridescent steel structure in the Scottsdale Civic Center was once a generic 1976 movie theater. Will Bruder performed architectural alchemy in 1999, transforming it into a mysterious, glimmering art object. The building is wrapped in galvanized steel panels finished in custom iridescent purple-gray, designed to mimic the shadows of the Superstition Mountains. The metallic skin curves and shifts colors as visitors walk around it, reflecting the desert sky.

The real magic happens at the building’s edges. James Turrell’s “Knight Rise” Skyspace in the sculpture courtyard is a concrete elliptical chamber with a knife-edge aperture in the ceiling that frames the sky, isolating it as a pure plane of color. James Carpenter’s dichroic glass scrim wall on the south side captures sunlight and splits it into rainbows that dance across the exterior walkway. The installations aren’t just in the building — they are the building, proving that stripmall bones can be redeemed through intelligent cladding and integrated art. The museum is open to the public with paid admission, and sunset viewings of the Skyspace are particularly popular.

MONROE STREET ABBEY

The roofless Gothic shell at the corner of Monroe Street and Third Avenue is downtown Phoenix’s most haunting architectural presence — a building defined by what it’s lost rather than what it’s preserved. Norman Marsh’s 1929 Italian Gothic Revival church was reduced to its skeleton by a 1984 fire. Here’s the twist: rather than restore or demolish, preservationists stabilized the walls and embraced the ruin. The poured concrete structure (which only looks like hand-carved stone) survived the flames that consumed the timber roof, leaving behind a roofless sanctuary where the sky now serves as ceiling.

The massive circular rose window frame on the south facade stands as dramatic silhouette — its concrete tracery intact though the original stained glass is gone. Inside, the columns and arches now function like a garden cloister, creating deep shadows and surreal indoor-outdoor atmosphere. The Abbey has transformed catastrophe into venue, hosting candlelight concerts and weddings beneath open sky and Gothic arches — a rare Phoenix example of accepting architectural loss as transformation rather than erasure. The facade is fully visible from Monroe and Third Avenue, though interior access generally requires a ticketed event.

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P R O G R A M

SPRING BOUQUET FOCACCIA

INGREDIENTS:

Focaccia:

Recipe

Writer and Photographer Francine Coles

Focaccia is already a pleasure to make — elastic, forgiving dough that rewards patience with a golden, dimpled crust. This spring version transforms that simple foundation into something closer to a garden painting: chive stems, parsley leaves and jewel-toned cherry tomato blossoms arranged across the dough’s surface before baking, then emerging from the oven as a centerpiece as beautiful as it is edible. The technique is as approachable as any loaf of bread; the result is worthy of any Easter table, Mother’s Day brunch or springtime celebration.

Yield: 12 servings

1 teaspoon honey 1 teaspoon kosher salt 3/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil, divided

2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour, plus more for kneading 1 cup lukewarm water (100–110°F)

2 1/4 teaspoons (one 1/4-ounce packet) active dry yeast

Spring Bouquet:

2 boxes chives 1 bunch Italian parsley 1 pint cherry tomatoes Flaky sea salt, to taste Fresh basil leaves, for topping

DIRECTIONS:

1. In a medium bowl, combine the yeast, lukewarm water and honey; stir to combine. Set aside until foam forms on the surface of the liquid, about 5 minutes.

2. Add 1/4 cup oil to the yeast mixture, followed by the flour and salt. Using a fork, stir until a shaggy dough forms, then turn out onto a lightly floured work surface. Knead until smooth and supple, about 10 minutes, then form into a ball. Alternatively, pour the oil in with the yeast mixture, transfer to the bowl of a stand mixer, add the flour and salt, and knead on medium-low speed with the dough hook for 7 to 8 minutes.

3. Lightly grease a large bowl with 1 tablespoon oil. Add the dough, cover with plastic wrap and set aside to rise until just slightly more than doubled in size, about 1 hour.

4. Brush a 9-by-13-inch rimmed baking sheet with 2 tablespoons oil. Transfer the dough to the pan and use your fingers to spread it to the edges. Press all over to form dimples, then drizzle 2 tablespoons oil over the top. Cover loosely with plastic wrap and set aside to rest until the dough puffs slightly, about 30 minutes.

5. Set a rack in the center of the oven and preheat to 450°F. Arrange chives as flower stems across the dough surface. Add parsley sprigs at the tops of the chive stems to suggest leaves. Halve some cherry tomatoes in a zigzag cut through the center, removing seeds where possible. Quarter others vertically without cutting through the base and fan open. Arrange the tomato pieces over the dough to form blossoms.

6. Drizzle the remaining 2 tablespoons olive oil over the top and sprinkle with flaky salt to taste. Bake until the focaccia is golden at the edges and browned on the bottom, about 20 minutes.

7. Remove from the oven and let cool slightly. Use an offset spatula to slide the focaccia onto a cutting board. Top with fresh basil leaves and let cool completely before cutting into pieces and serving.right side over the first side. Brush the top and sides of the pastry with more egg wash, being careful not to use too much. Sprinkle with fresh ground pepper.

8. Bake until pastry is golden and cheese is nicely melted, 14–18 minutes.