The Wadi Rum Desert Lodge in Jordan is a project designed in 2011 by Oppenheim Architects in Florida. The stunning resort takes maximizes the thermal advantages of rock in the desert by building the lodge directly into the stone cliffs. The result is almost an anti-architecture, the facade is the cliff’s face. Its precedent wouldn’t be Baden-Baden, it would be a mine shaft. But, like the raw finish at Marcel Breuer’s Whitney Museum, when combined with the starkly angular elements of the structure, the rough stone takes on a brutal elegance.
