A home’s definition has changed…a recession, the pandemic have each redefined ideas, uses, even desires for a home within new generations of potential homeowners. The idea of permanent has been altered through a generational shift in employment opportunities and or locations. Home is not seen as permanent but of “right now,” with different uses. Add to this the changing idea of what a family is, the nuclear family of yesterday is no longer the “only” definition of family. Our clients decided during covid to leave the SF Bay Area, as working from home became the desired option. This change, a reconfiguration of home and office not needing to be part of the same city, brought a desire to seek a new location. Their search was formed around the environment, proximity to airports, and a lifestyle that encouraged a healthy relationship with the outdoors. After searching throughout the southwest, they kept returning to Henderson…an arid climate that enabled year-round outside activities, the 8th largest airport in the country, a landscape different then they were accustomed and adjacency to Las Vegas as a draw for visiting family and friends. Their selected site lies along the foothills of the McCullough Mountain Range. The site enabled both an anchoring into the mountain and an overlook of the valley beyond. Their desire was to create a home that felt part of the landscape, one that encouraged a life lived indoors and out. One that embraced a healthy lifestyle for themselves, family, and friends. For what is to be their last home, they wanted a sense of permanence. A place that they would call home for some time. This sense of permanence is achieved through the blackened rammed earth walls. Soils remnants of the volcanic McCullough Mountains form the makeup of the walls. Envisioned as “ruins” that would stand well past their lifetimes, these walls dominate the site and create moments of refuge and prospect scattered among the replanting of native plants courtyards. Within the landscape and attached to the rammed earth, a series of pavilions (guest, bedroom, living, retreat) are formed. Movement into each of the pavilions requires passage through the 3’ thick rammed earth walls. Their thickness, a reminder of the context, connects the home to a time when structures in the Mojave Desert were hand made from materials of the site. The rammed earth is heavy, made from the mountains, they create a permanence that will remain through generations or altering as “family” needs change. Opposing this permanence are the transparent enclosures of the pavilions. Each pavilion, while anchored and secure from the street, are open and welcome the courtyards into their space. One is in constant embracement of the landscape and the McCullough Mountains.