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Some architects suggest that in an era of spare, high-tech homes that feel like the inside of an engine, many non-Hispanics are drawn to an idealized image of a Latin refuge: an environment that is at once welcoming and protective, that holds a bit of history, a lot of family and no sharp edges. Of all the U.S.'s Latino landscapes, perhaps the most haunting is in New Mexico, where Native American, Spanish and eastern-Anglo sensibilities have boiled together in the Southwest sun for the past four centuries. The so- called Santa Fe look, romanced into the mainstream by Ralph Lauren, has turned into the hottest design fad in years. "People naturally want to return to the earth," explains Rachel Elizondo, owner of Santa Fe's Storyteller gallery, a mecca for decorators. "A clay pot built by hand in natural colors is a living thing."
To the extent that anyone can define it, Santa Fe style is largely a matter of shape and shading -- the colors of sagebrush and ashes, watery blues and rose and clay. The sand-castle city of its birth is a town without right angles, where whitewashed walls and doorways and fireplaces bend and curve, hand shaped from clay. Sometimes, as translated by non-Hispanic designers like Architect David Kellen, the style becomes an "abstraction of a Mexican type of design."
Natives see a certain irony in the sudden cachet of their homespun style. "Originally people built adobe homes, which are really mud huts, because the materials were cheap and available," explains Santa Fe Architect Michael Bodelson, 33. "It was a vernacular architecture, low technology." These days, he notes in amusement, only the rich can afford to build adobe homes, since authentic construction can add about 15% to 20% to the cost of a comparable wood-frame or brick home.
Not everyone is enamored of the style: Architecture Professor Frank Dimster, at the University of Southern California, calls the Santa Fe look "cinema architecture," an ultimately escapist style designed to comfort rather than challenge. Even some of its champions view its proliferation with alarm. "It's become too much a style," says Kellen, who has begun to shy away from using the Southwestern aesthetic. "A lot of people who don't understand it that well are making a cartoon out of it."
While Southwestern style dominates domestic design, the Moorish arches and walled courtyards of the Southeast are appearing more and more in public and commercial architecture. From the historic Douglas Entrance to the city of Coral Gables, Fla., to Plaza Guadalupe in San Antonio, the Latin elements promise sunlight and accessibility, a sense of invitation. "I've always liked porches, arcades and transitional spaces that are open on the sides," says Miami Architect Hilario Candela, a partner in what he claims is the largest Hispanic-owned design and construction firm in the U.S. "Most Latin public spaces are essentially gregarious in style. I see it as an outdoor living room without a roof."