It is in Albuquerque that world-famous architect Antoine Predock has his offices. Predock infuses a strong sense of place into his designs. He has melded Pueblo Revival and modernism for the La Luz development, and created a “river-edge vernacular” for the Rio Grande Nature Center and Preserve which acts as a ‘blind’ providing panoramic views of the wildfowl areas.

In describing his design for Mesa Del Sol Predock notes that The building is an artifact of the site – an ancient weathered presence like bones you might find in the high desert. It’s an exploration of different aspects of bone – from the cross sectional beauty of bone’s lattice structure to volumetric fragments.

New Mexico-born, Albuquerque-based Bart Prince is a ground-breaking architect whose designs eschew form follows function in favor of architecture as a sculptural form. Prince regularly upends notions of what houses should look like and how they should function.

While his designs may shock, or at least surprise, they grow out of the intentional desire to be different yet relevant to each situation. They grow out of a situation – the site, clients needs and desires, the materials used and the structural systems – rather than be applied to it.

One other architectural form has grown out of the fertile New Mexican soil. Earthships. Native American designs and the architecture of the pueblo often incorporated an awareness of solar energy. This intentionality is also expressed in Taos Earthships. Designed by Michael Reynolds, a New-Mexico architect who says he practices biotecture and is a proponent of "radically sustainable living,” Reynolds’ Earthships are built of recycled automobile tires filled with compacted earth. The rammed earth “brick” (encased in steel belted rubber) echoes adobe’s thermal properties. His designs use winter sunlight to warm the tire walls and earthen floor which then release the warmth during the night. In summer overhangs and other design elements keep the Earthship cool.

At a time when cities across the country are mining their history for something that distinguishes them from “Anywhere” USA, New Mexico offers its vibrant, evolving regional architecture. From the adobe brown pueblo revival buildings, to the Earthships of Taos, with the substance of history as the bedrock, the architecture of New Mexico grows, and evolves.