Residential drafting in Scottsdale, Arizona

Southern Scottsdale's postwar neighborhoods are unusually well documented, and the documented house is specific: a single level ranch with concrete block walls, a concrete floor, and a low pitched roof. Village Grove, platted in 1957, shows the pattern at full scale. Two hundred fifty five houses on lots averaging 8,500 square feet, an alley serving every house, repeating plans, masonry block and brick exteriors, steel casement windows, and roof systems built from pre constructed trusses.

That construction shapes the work. An addition here ties into block bearing walls and an original truss roof, not conventional wood framing, so which walls carry the roof and how the trusses bear has to be confirmed before an opening is drawn. The houses have also changed over the decades: exposed block, painted block, and stucco over block can all be the same original wall.

North of the postwar grid, Scottsdale is a different city. Master planned development starts with McCormick Ranch in the early 1970s and continues north into larger lots, desert terrain, and in the far north the environmentally sensitive lands, where preserved natural area rather than a setback can be the constraint that decides where a building goes.

We treat the two Scottsdales as separate jobs. A block and truss ranch near the old core and a desert lot north of the canal share a city name and almost nothing else.