Arizona Architecture from the Archives

Fred Linn Osmon earned a bachelor of arts degree from Washington University in St. Louis and studied under Louis Kahn at the University of Pennsylvania, where he earned a master’s degree.  He served in the United States Air Force, worked in several top architectural firms, and was an architectural research associate at Educational Facilities Laboratories (EFL) of the Ford Foundation. 

Mr. Osmon taught at the University of California, Berkeley for five years before beginning his architectural practice in Arizona in 1973.  He taught several design courses and a course on utopian housing at Arizona State University.  His architectural projects have focused on building ecologically-sound and beautiful environments in the Sonoran Desert.  Mr. Osmon has received numerous awards including:

Honor Award 1987–American Institute of Architects–Skane House

Phoenix Visual Improvement Award 1987–Lakewood Kwik Stop

Environmental Excellence Award 1985–Valley Forward Association, Rabinowitz House

Merit Award 1984 –Arizona Society of the American Institute of Architects – Rabinowitz House

Excellence in Planning and Design—Architectural Record Houses of 1979 – Osmon House

Award of Merit–Foundation for San Francisco Architectural Heritage –Center for Educational Development

Bay Area A.I.A. Honor Award 1974 –Center for Educational Development (with Esherick, Homsey, Dodge & Davis Architects)

Award of Exceptional Distinction–State of California 1966–Temporary Communities for Farm Worker Families

Sea Ranch Design Award 1974–Nimnicht House

Quotations in the boxes below are from Toward an Architecture Without Permanent Form?: The Projects and Ideas of Fred Linn Osmon, Architect. 

This project involved adding a row of shops to an existing group of Spanish style buildings. Eye-catching colors draw attention to the basic structure of two straightforward boxes containing six shops, an office and a storage room. At the center of the shops is a pedestrian passageway. Osmon considered the desert sun in his design by creating an arcade to shade and protect shop display windows.

Many of Fred Linn Osmon’s residential designs were single-family homes within a pristine desert context. A basic design principle was “to minimize the destruction of the natural desert and to respond ecologically and technologically to the demands of the climate.” Osmon highlighted the desert mountain site in his design for the Kaplan House, which mimics the forms of the mountains and a large saguaro on the lot.

Fred Linn Osmon described the fourth house that he designed for himself and his family as “a summary of the paradigm searches I have been making over the years in my desert houses. The overall solution is an enclosed compound of four separate pavilions and adjacent courts and gardens.” To adapt the traditional house design to the Sonoran Desert, Osmon noted that he “combined the American outward-looking house with the inward-facing courtyard house.” 

Osmon worked on a number of commercial projects involving “buildings that are not normally accorded much architectural consideration. In each case, I gave such buildings the same depth of study as I would for any building and the same design consideration.” He described the design for the Saguaro Hill Lanes in Cave Creek as a “Santa Fe mud hut motif.”

Osmon designed the Skane Residence in Carefree with open interior spaces and a variety of outdoor venues to provide access to its desert site. The American Institute of Architects recognized the design and its architect with the Honor Award in 1987.

Drawings and papers, 1960s-2000s

32 oversize folders and 16 boxes, c. 14 linear feet

The collection consists of architectural drawings produced for projects (residential, commercial, medical, educational) by Fred Linn Osmon, as well as biographical and historical materials.  

For more information visit the collection finding aid (pdf)

De Chirico Charisma: Spanish Village Addition, Carefree, Arizona." Architectural Record 173.6 (1985): 114-5. Print.

Freeman, Allen. "Reinterpreting Regionalism: Arizona: Three Architects Who Respect the Desert Terrain and Traditions." Architecture: the AIA journal 73.3 (1984): 114-119. Print.

"House at Carefree, Arizona." Triglyph 3 (1986): 25-28. Print.

Morton, David. "Desert Forms: Rabinowitz and Lange Houses, Carefree, Arizona." Progressive architecture 62.6 (1981): 90-[97]. Print.

Osmon, Fred Linn. Patterns for Designing Children's Centers: a Report from Educational Facilities Laboratories. New York: Educational Facilities Laboratories, 1971. High Density Collection Stacks LB3257 .O85

Osmon, Fred Linn. Toward an Architecture Without Permanent Form?: The Projects and Ideas of Fred Linn Osmon, Architect: February 15 to March 11, 2005. High Density Collection Stacks NA 737.O76 A4 2005

Harold Housley
Archivist, Design and the Arts Special Collections
Harold.Housley@asu.edu 
(480) 965-6370