He’s designed stunning restaurants, now this architect is building unique townhomes. 

An architect known for designing dazzling Phoenix restaurants has a new midtown Phoenix project that’s closer to home. John Labahn, of Lab Design Collaborative, designed the stunning Ocotillo, Christopher’s at the Wrigley Mansion and Pizza to the Rescue. For his latest project, he teamed up with Chicago architect Erik Johnson on a cluster of 20 new townhouses on Third Street and Windsor Avenue. Soleil, which means sun in French, is inspired by Parisian maisons de ville. The four-story homes feature two to three bedrooms and expansive rooftop terraces. Homes start at $850,000.   

“The Arizona climate enables a seamless connection between indoor spaces and the stunning Sonoran Desert landscape for much of the year,” Labahn says. “I constantly strive to incorporate and highlight our native landscape in every project.” 

Labahn shared more about his leap into residential architecture, the inspirations behind Soleil and some of the development’s unique architectural features.  

This is your first collaboration together. How did this partnership come to be, and why townhomes?  

We recognized a demand for this style of live-work urban living. Townhomes were a suitable choice for the neighborhood and the property’s size. 

Most Valley residents will recognize your work on restaurants, including Ocotillo, Christopher’s and Pizza to the Rescue. While those places are distinct, they all manage to connect diners to nature and the outdoors. Is that your approach with residential designs as well? 

The Arizona climate enables a seamless connection between indoor spaces and the stunning Sonoran Desert landscape for much of the year. I constantly strive to incorporate and highlight our native landscape in every project.   

Midtown is an area full of vintage homes and modern apartments and condos; what do you hope to add to the community with Soleil?  

Soleil focuses on optimizing comfortable, spacious urban living. It offers the chance to be close to all the action while minimizing the stress and noise typically associated with city living.   

Tell us about Le Corbusier and how his Parisian townhomes inspired Soleil. 

Soleil was inspired by the work of Charles Edward Jennerette (affectionately known as Le Corbusier) and embodies many features typical of his “Early Modern” architectural style, showcasing large rectangular windows with abstract frame patterns alongside prominent horizontal “ribbon” windows. 

The community name is French for sun, but you’ve designed these homes with “brise soleil,” an architectural feature that can break up or block direct sunlight. 

The brise soleil is essentially a sunshade designed specifically to work with the sun.   

Tell us how you achieved that in these homes.  

The windows and white stucco vertical wall surfaces are often aligned in the same plane, minimizing deep shadows. This design approach results in what historians refer to as “dematerialization.” Although the facade consists of thousands of pounds of materials, it gives an impression of being lightweight and almost ethereal, as if it’s barely there. 

Additionally, large, protruding rectangular shapes seem to hover effortlessly, thanks to this visual technique of dematerialization. We have aimed to incorporate these aesthetic design strategies to evoke a similar lightweight feeling in the Soleil project. 

North and south glazing, paired with south-facing sun shades, enables effective solar control. In winter, when the sun is lower in the sky, sunlight can penetrate, while in summer, the sun shades protect against direct sunlight when the sun is higher.