The desert is a landscape of absences as much as presences, where arroyos mark the memory of water long after it has passed. Out of this terrain, Lacuna takes shape as a 7,700-square-foot residence conceived not as an object placed upon the land, but as a form uncovered within it. Its architecture is guided by the logic of erosion, voids carved, passages revealed, and masses shaped by the natural forces of time. From these gestures emerges a dwelling where space flows like tributaries through a canyon, carrying light, air, and shadow as integral building materials. The parti emerges from the contours of the site, where landforms bend and converge like tributaries feeding into a wash. From this central convergence, the plan radiates outward, as if following the traces left by water across the terrain. The house is not conceived as an object placed upon the desert but as a presence revealed from it, a composition of subtraction where voids hold equal significance to built mass. Courtyards, hollows, and passages act as architectural tributaries, giving definition through absence as much as presence. Formally, the massing recalls canyon walls, with curving, monolithic geometries echoing the resilience of Red Rock Canyon. Circulation unfolds as a canyon walk: compressed passages open into expansive courtyards, narrow thresholds dissolve into broad living spaces, and shifting light washes across curved surfaces as the desert sun arcs overhead. The architecture choreographs a rhythm of compression and release, guiding inhabitants through sequences of shelter, exposure, shadow, and light. Materiality reinforces the geological metaphor. Plywood-formed concrete layers like sediment, its striations carrying the imprint of time. Stone anchors the home with geological weight, while wood softens transitions between spaces. Weathering steel, left to patina under desert air, echoes the slow transformation of canyon rock. Openings are treated as if carved by natural forces: apertures aligned with solar paths, skylights that wash surfaces with daylight, and windows that frame horizons like water-cut slots in stone. The experience of Lacuna is at once monumental and intimate. At the scale of the land, its massing rises like sculpted canyon walls. At the scale of daily life, its courtyards, reflective pools, and framed views create moments of pause, memory, and connection. Though water is scarce, its presence endures as metaphor: in the reflective surfaces that hold light like still pools, in the geometry of erosion expressed in form, and in the cycles of compression and release woven through movement. Lacuna is not merely a dwelling but a vessel for time and atmosphere. Defined by absence as much as presence, it emerges as a hollowed landscape where voids shape life as profoundly as walls. In its balance of erosion and construction, permanence and impermanence, the project offers an architecture inseparable from the desert that gave it form.