Now about this design in particular… The word “behemoth” comes to mind. Appropriate, as this exercise in ego is frighteningly reminiscent of the Romulan Empire emblem from classic Star Trek. (http://www.deviantart.com/art/Romulan-emblem-101897509) I’m not sure which is more bloated, the size – over 16,000sqft – or the price tag – a whopping $30M. Of course both of those are dependent on whether anyone cares to actually have it built (thankfully, it currently exists only in the mind of someone with way too much time on their hands). If you’re fond of the location (northeast of Phoenix in the euphemistically named “Paradise”) but don’t care for the design, the Sotheby’s link says you can pick up the land alone for a little under $3M. And right after you buy that I’d like to show you a gorgeous private island I’m selling… just off the north slope of Alaska. It’s a steal at only $10M.

I can honestly say that if I’d tried to pawn this design off to one of my architecture school professors I would have been denounced even more loudly and and with more vitriol than usual. It’s simply a horrendous treatment of the site. It looks more like something from “Aliens” has attached itself to the face of the hillside than it does a home. Even if it were something glitzier, like, say, an art gallery, the building/site interaction manages to be both clumsy and atrocious. In such a upscale area I would have thought there would be “No Dumping” ordinances.

In other words, what a piece of garbage. We can only hope no one takes the bait. If they do, at the very least they deserve whatever happens with the apparently tempered glass pillars out on the terrace. I’d pay good money to see what happens to them during a massive desert temperature swing.