PreservingRalphHaver'sLegacy

Ralph Haver designed over 1,000 homes across the Phoenix metropolitan area in the 1950s and 60s. His signature flat rooflines, clerestory windows, and connection to the desert landscape defined a generation of post-war housing.

By the 2010s, many of these homes had been disfigured by unsympathetic renovations, stucco applied over original brick, carports enclosed, signature windows replaced with generic aluminium units.

This project asked a simple question: what would Ralph Haver have intended, and how do we get back there?

Working from archival drawings, period photographs, and conversations with original residents, Contreras developed a restoration approach that honours Haver's original intent while meeting the needs of contemporary living.

The intervention was guided by a principle of minimum change for maximum effect. Where original material remained, it was preserved and repaired. Where elements had been lost, period-correct replacements were sourced.

The result is a home that reads as authentically mid-century while functioning comfortably as a 21st-century residence.