Interview with Craig Hoopes 

Architect Craig Hoopes has lived in Santa Fe for 14 years, continuing his architecture career in the southwest after practicing in Baltimore, Maryland.  His notable commercial projects include The Lensic, the United Church of Santa Fe and the Kitchen Angels building.  The homes that Hoopes has designed are thoughtful responses to his clients and the landscapes in which their homes exist.

Why do you live in Santa Fe?

CH: The quality of life keeps me here.  I’ve always been very involved in music and art, and here was a small town of 60,000 people and I could have everything I wanted in my life.  I have more here in terms of the things I want in my life than I did in Baltimore.

Are there certain things about being an architect in New Mexico that you find unique or especially compelling?

CH: When I first got to Santa Fe, I was able to spend time just studying and learning about how it all went together.  One of the things that I love about New Mexico is that there still are craftsmen here — and craftsmanship is really valued.  The whole idea that craft was a part of architecture here was extremely exciting to me.

In NM there is still a tradition of the barter system and creative exchanges that I think encourage craft and keep it valuable for a lot of people.  Working with a community of craftsmen – for whom fine craftsmanship is both income and a way of life – makes the projects more meaningful.

How would you describe your approach to architecture?

CH: I believe that good design is something that enhances everybody’s life — and in order for you to have good design, you have to respond to the client’s needs. It’s about designing for the client and not for yourself; it requires a sort of detachment of ego instead of an engagement thereof.

Each project is different because everybody has a different idea of what his or her house should be about.  We’re here to be the interpreter.

We start by asking a lot of questions and having people pull together pictures of things they like – a color or how light comes into a room — it doesn’t necessarily have to look like their house, but it pictures something that has attracted them.

Are there certain materials and styles with which you most like to work?

CH: I think of myself as being a minimalist, a modernist.  I love the original Santa Fe style before it got all kitched up.  What you saw then had truth and integrity to it; the beams held up the roof, bancos were for seating, fireplaces were the heating system and the rooms were pretty spare and without much ornamentation. That ornamentation came with the popularization of the style, not the actual style itself.  I think there’s a real kinship between that original Santa Fe style and a minimalist style of architecture.

What you find exciting about designing homes in the Santa Fe area?

CH: I like the idea that craft can be a part of it, that form and shape are things you can experiment with here — everything doesn’t have to be a right angle; you can round things, you can play with how light works.  Our light is so special here, and we do a lot of work with how light comes into houses, so that you can watch the light come into the home and onto the wall and watch it work around the house. That’s really a thing I love to work with here, and working with light is really something that can provide a structure to a home.

We also just love trying to create an environment for people that raises their expectations about what the built environment can mean — and at the same time, we’re trying to find a way to answer, “what is shelter?”  I’m interested in asking what are those things that are really meaningful about the places we live — when you go back to early periods in human history when people were struggling to create shelter, there was real meaning in their choices, and along the way we’ve sort of lost some of that meaning.  I’d like to think that what we do is help people find meaning again in their shelter.