New Jack City, aka Sawtooth Canyon. South of Barstow, in the class of a small Alabama Hills with different geology.

A Monastery in the desert. I saw it on google and the monks were very nice to me when I just showed up with my camera. An amazing juxtaposition of images in the desert environment.

Turns out, they are in the process of building a giant church/conference center. Once they learned I was an architect, the monks were fine with me wandering around the construction site on my own. Using a type of ICF building material for the walls, and some HUGE steel beams for the main space. As the final leg, this was a fitting segue back into my “architecture with meaning”. Funny how things work out sometimes.