The leading southwest architect of his time, John Gaw Meem brought the Santa Fe style to its peak in the 1920s and 1930s. Facing Southwest provides an intensive introduction to Meem’s great houses-sun-baked retreats that echo desert mesas and open out to vast landscape panoramas. It uncovers the fascinating personal odyssey that took Meem from a bicultural childhood in Brazil to the Virginia Military Institute, to work on the design of New York City subways, to an abbreviated career in international banking in Brazil, and to a tuberculosis sanitarium in Santa Fe, where he found his life’s work. With photography by Robert Reck.