A home for entertaining, designed by the owner (with a little help)
Story by Susan Craig; photography by Jack Kotz; from Su Casa Magazine with permission
Latitude 35″09′. Longitude 106″28′. The survey marker embedded in the center of the round foyer tells us the exact position of the home of James R.Cole, DDS, and Terri L. Cole, president of Greater Albuquerque Chamber of Commerce. It’s quite possibly the only home in Albuquerque with such a marker. For those of us who need a more graphic description, the home is in High Desert, alive with vistas of the Sandias. It’s called “Brahmavista,” or “yearn for a view.” The Coles not only yearned for that view, they captured it.
The house was born on Jim Cole’s birthday in 1998 when they decided to build a home that Cole would design himself. They found the ideal one-acre lot and pictured themselves drinking in the view from the great room. As the first to build in their area, they needed to site the house carefully, so Cole floated balloons at the corners of adjoining lots in order to visualize a worst-case scenario of nearby homes. A bit of a twist to the site plan, and the dwelling took shape.
Cole quickly turned his design into a floor plan and elevation, after which the Coles’ builder John Kaltenbach introduced him to designer Eric Spurlock. “He (Spurlock) embellished the design,” says Cole, “taking what I’d done but not making it his. I feel that I have pride of ownership.”
