The Hurleys of Ohio love the hills of Desert Mountain - and the incredible views and plentiful golfing aren’t so bad either.

Alison and Jim Hurley admire Arizona’s high desert, boulder-filled foothills and mountains from their 6,450-sq.-ft. home in a luxury golf community in North Scottsdale. A few miles north of their two-story home are Apache Peak and the Tonto National Forest. Just south is the Apache golf course, one of six Jack Nicklaus Signature courses at Desert Mountain, and, in the distance, city lights flicker out of Scottsdale, Phoenix and beyond.

Designed by Scott Giesen and built by Shiloh Custom Homes, their four-bedroom, five-and-half-bath home encircles one of the knolls that characterize the undulating landscape of 8,000-acre Desert Mountain, developed by Lyle Anderson. Giesen, whose Phoenix-based Giesen Design Studio designs custom homes throughout the Valley, and all of Arizona, calls the style of the Hurleys’ home organic pueblo, with contemporary flair, for its combination of site sensitivity and personally inflected Southwest themes. Working from Frank Lloyd Wright’s famous dictum that a home should be of a hill, not on it, he created a plan for the Hurleys that fits the landscape.

“I designed the home to blend into the knoll lot, so that the house steps down the slope,” Giesen says. “Because of this, the house sits into the lot—not dominating it but becoming a part of it.”

For the home’s overall look, the couple wanted quiet Southwest. “They asked for a classic look with viga posts and ceilings,” he says. To complete the theme, Giesen called for natural stone veneer, rough-sawn timbers, flagstones and synthetic stucco. “We moved to Scottsdale from Cincinnati because of the attractiveness of the desert foothills, the Sonoran Desert and the lifestyle of the Valley,” says Alison, who owns Avant-Garde Marketing Solutions, a consulting company. Jim is a retired Procter & Gamble vice president. For three years, they have lived in their new Desert Mountain home as a primary residence and spend much of the summer in a Midwest getaway home. The home, from design through delivery, took about two and a half years to complete.

The Hurleys met Giesen through Keith Bolock, a co-principal of Shiloh Homes, one of the Valley’s premiere build-to-suit luxury homebuilders for more than two decades. Bolock, Ron Wieler and Lolita Cardona have owned the company since July 2004. “While viewing Shiloh’s and other builder’s projects, we were most impressed with the uniqueness and creativity in homes where Scott had participated,” Jim says. The couple liked Giesen’s site-sensitive design—the home’s circularity echoes the knoll’s form—as well as his ability to create a home consistent with their desire for comfort, beauty and practicality and incorporate green components like their extensive patio covers and dual-pane windows. “In the end, we had a design that would provide outstanding city-lights, mountain and sunset views, while providing a comfortable flow for gathering and guest privacy,” he explains.

Obtaining those views was somewhat of a challenge for Shiloh. “Trying to get as much height as possible in the building envelope to maximize views was tricky,” Bolock says. “But, we were able to work with Jim, Alison and Scott, and everyone was happy with the final configuration.”