The Karen Terry House

The Karen Terry House (Santa Fe, New Mexico, 1974) was the second passive solar house built in New Mexico and became one of the most widely publicized homes in the state. Karen Terry commissioned it, shaped its design, and built it largely with her own hands; it has been documented in a 1977 SolarVision film and profiled in the national press.

Design

Terry was referred by New Mexico architect William Lumpkins to David Wright, a Californian then living in New Mexico and regarded as one of the country’s leading passive solar architects. Wright adapted a variation of his own house — The Sunscoop (his own 1974 Santa Fe adobe house) around Terry’s ideas — she had sketched what she wanted as “a Navajo hogan cut in half with the south end glass.” (The Sunscoop is a separate building, documented in Baer’s 2009 AIA slideshow; the Terry house departs from it with brick floors and a four-level plan.) The result is a compact multilevel design of less than 1,000 square feet that reads as far larger, organized on four levels:

• a greenhouse with brick floors (lowest documented level);
• the principal living level — entry, living room with a kiva fireplace, dining space, and kitchen;
• a level with a distinctive bath including a homemade tile sunken tub and a large dressing/closet area;
• a sleeping loft reached by a ladder at the top.

Brick is the thermal-storage medium throughout — used on all floors. The house is often described as working “on the same principle as a thermos bottle.”

Construction

Terry built the house herself to save money, hiring a single helper, Tom Brady, whose only prior experience was assisting on one build. It took the two of them nine months. She financed construction with money earned fishing in Alaska.

Performance

The house has no mechanical backup system — only a wood stove that Terry reported using just four or five times in the first six years. Terry candidly called the design “full of solar mistakes,” reflecting the immature passive-solar technology of the early 1970s: it was built for maximum heat gain and ended up with too much glass, so it overheats in winter (requiring vents and windows to be opened) and needs shades in summer. Despite this, she reported it “performs incredibly well.”

Documentation

• Architecture, Building and the Sun: The Karen Terry House — a 1977 SolarVision documentary film by Martin McPhillips describing, through interviews, the planning and construction of the house (OCLC 4630045).
• “Multilevel charmer has passive solar heat” — Rocky Mountain News (Denver), April 26, 1980, by Marjorie Barrett.

See also

• Karen Terry
• David Wright
• Baer AIA passive solar slideshow
• The Baer House