A Concrete Townhouse in Mexico City Marks Studio Rick Joy’s First Ground-Up Urban Building.

For years, architect Rick Joy was known mainly for designing houses in the Arizona desert. But that’s changing. “We’ve had a lot of ‘firsts’ in the last few years,” notes the principal of Tucson-based Studio Rick Joy. One was a train station in Princeton, New Jersey, the firm’s first public commission. Another was an 11,000-square-foot, two-family residence recently completed in Mexico City, its first ground-up urban building. “People tend to think of our projects as being out in the wilderness,” Joy says. “This one is squeezed between two other houses.”