‘Seek not to follow in the footsteps of men of old; seek what they sought.’—Matsuo Basho With the courtyard-home project Six, Luis Ibarra and Teresa Rosano, AIA LEED AP, continue to design innovative urban spaces that celebrate the past, incorporate today’s materials and respect the future.

The husband-and-wife principals of Tucson’s Ibarra Rosano Design Architects are completing three pairs of three-bedroom courtyard homes measuring 2,297 to 2,798 livable square feet on a 1.76-acre infill site just north of the University Medical Center and the University of Arizona. The final two homes include guest studios, which have an added bedroom each.

Inspired by architects including Glenn Murcutt, Judith Chafee and Luís Barragan, the native Tucsonans and graduates of the University of Arizona College of Architecture founded the firm Ibarra Rosano Design Architects in 1999. Five years later, they created a separate company committed to responsible infill construction, Dreamspace, with Page Repp Jr., president of Repp Design + Construction, and Jerry and Desi Winter.

The team began by razing two deteriorating homes in the older Tucson neighborhood. Remaining on the site is a two-bedroom adobe house built in 1935 to a design by Josias Thomas Joesler (1895-1956), one of the city’s distinguished early architects.