Project Name: Casa Luce

Location: Tucson, Arizona, United States

Design Team: HK Associates Inc

Floor Area: 3,558 ft² (approx. 330.6 m²)

Completion: 2024

Photography: Ema Peter Photography

Design Features: Casa Luce is a comprehensive renovation of a 1960s mid-century modern residence in the Catalina foothills of Tucson, Arizona, originally conceived by local modernist architect Tom Gist. Led by principals Kathy Hancox and Michael Kothke of HK Associates Inc, the project is guided by a single, overriding ambition: to flood the heart of the home with natural daylight and reorient a formerly introverted dwelling outward toward the desert landscape and distant horizon.

The most structurally decisive intervention was the removal of four masonry piers that had supported the roof at the centre of the plan. Realised through innovative structural engineering, skilled carpentry, and considerable physical effort, this bold manoeuvre liberated the primary living spaces beneath a newly floating ceiling plane, fundamentally transforming the spatial perception of the interior and dissolving the visual barriers that had long obscured the panoramic views of the Santa Rita Mountains.

That structural audacity is held in balance by a refined restraint in material language. Artisanal lime plaster walls are paired with sustainable wood veneer cabinetry to create a calm, minimal backdrop that mediates between the home's original structural palette of concrete, earth, and timber, and the expansive Sonoran desert beyond. Frosted glass screens and partially exposed roof structure thread natural light along the bedroom corridor, transforming what was once a low, darkened passage into a procession guided by the arc of the desert sun.

The exterior is equally reimagined, expanding the perceptual boundary of the home outward to emphasise its connection with the broader landscape. In front of the south-facing picture window, a new infinity-edge swimming pool extends the visual axis toward the horizon, its water surface aligning with the distant mountain range in a gesture that is cinematic in its scale and ambition. A sequence of long concrete steps folds out from the interior threshold to create terraced amphitheatre seating, transforming the desert panorama into a setting for daily outdoor life.

Casa Luce also represents a principled position on sustainable architectural practice. The project employs a low-embodied carbon design strategy that prioritises the reuse of existing structural elements and the sourcing of low-impact materials, achieving a radical spatial transformation while minimising demolition and waste. It is, above all, a confident argument for renovation over replacement, and for an architecture that listens as much as it speaks.

Design Team: HK Associates Inc is a Tucson, Arizona-based architecture practice founded in the mid-2000s by principals Kathy Hancox, AIA, and Michael Kothke, AIA, NCARB, ASID. Both principals carry a professional lineage rooted in internationally recognised firms across Vancouver, British Columbia, and San Francisco, California. Their arrival in Arizona in 2003 to collaborate with celebrated desert architect Rick Joy proved formative, cultivating a sustained commitment to site-responsive design and the spatial qualities particular to the Sonoran desert. The practice holds active architectural licensure in Arizona, Colorado, and New Mexico, with NCARB certification enabling reciprocal licensure across North America.

The firm's methodology is anchored in close client collaboration, rigorous construction documentation, and sustained involvement through construction administration, ensuring that design intent is preserved with precision from concept through completion. Hancox currently serves as Secretary of the AIA Committee on Design and has previously held positions on the AIA Strategic Council and as President of AIA Arizona. Kothke, recipient of the 2019 AIA Young Architect Award and multiple DesignIntelligence Most Admired Educator honours, chairs the Master of Architecture programme at the University of Arizona's College of Architecture, Planning and Landscape Architecture, integrating academic inquiry and professional practice with equal rigour.

In 2025, Forbes recognised HK Associates among its Best-in-State Residential Architects, affirming the practice's standing within the high-end residential design sector. HK Associates Inc approaches every commission as an opportunity to give built form to the personal narratives of its clients, translating individual ways of living and emotional aspirations into architecture that is precise in its language, enduring in its presence, and genuinely of its place.