Not every yard has a tree worth building around, and this one had exactly none — high desert scrub and a single mesquite too small to hold weight. We built the third in a series of freestanding tower houses on four galvanized steel legs sunk into concrete footings below the frost line, which in far West Texas is not very deep at all.
The client, an amateur astronomer, wanted a flat section of roof deck for a telescope mount, so the main cabin sits slightly off-center under a partial roof, leaving open sky to the south. Corten steel cladding was chosen over wood specifically because it needed zero maintenance in a climate that alternates between drought and flash flood with little warning — it's already rusted to a deep orange that matches the caliche soil almost exactly.
At night, string lights along the railing are the only illumination for nearly two miles in any direction.