The architect Rick Joy has never been big on twisted spires of titanium or angular glass boxes. Amid the saguaro cacti, creosote bushes, and red Sonoran dust outside Tucson, Arizona, Joy builds tough, low-slung structures, as earthy as they are elegant, evoking native adobe dwellings as much as the frankly Minimalist sculpture of Donald Judd and Richard Serra. Acclaimed projects like the Tubac House and Desert Nomad House suggest a lifelong association with the Southwest, but Joy was born in Dover-Foxcroft, Maine, studied music in college, and spent his 20s traveling the country as a hardworking drummer, pounding out every musical style from jazz to funk to rock. "It was fun," Joy recalls. "But far too often I saw someone at the top of the business standing by the van at 2:30 in the morning, smoking a cigarette and having had too much to drink. I decided that wasn't going to be my lifestyle." Instead, when he was 28, Joy escaped the club circuit and enrolled in architecture school at the University of Arizona. By 1993, at the age of 34, he'd already launched his own practice.

Now 47, Joy is arguably the leading American practitioner of a contemporary approach to architecture that's all about regional traditions and materials, landscape and context. He approaches the harsh contours of the Sonoran desert—a challenging environment for any architect—with the zeal of a convert. "The subtleties here are pretty extraordinary," Joy says, "and it does take a bit of extra effort to read a place like this. And then it's so stunningly beautiful and nuanced that it just drove my work." His peers have recognized his rugged passion and vision: The American Academy of Arts and Letters gave him its Award in Architecture in 2002; the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum presented him with a National Design Award in 2004; and the American Institute of Architects has offered its laurels, too. But he's only getting started. Joy's current projects include Francis Ford Coppola's new Napa home; an eco-resort in southern Utah; and—after he beat out Rem Koolhaas and a slew of older A-list architects for the commission—the master plan for an entire town on Bahia Balandra, near La Paz, Mexico.

Joy puts overall sensory experience—the crunch of a gravel footpath, the scent of natural sage, the view of a particular landscape—ahead of abstract considerations of style and form. "My role as a drummer was to make the atmospheric quality of the groove," he says. "As an architect, I just continued that way of approaching space. To me, a lot of the time the experience or the entrance to a building evolves like a song. There's a narrative. It's really more about what it feels like to go through the front door than designing the coolest front door possible."

The Desert Nomad House, completed last year, is a prime example. Little more than three rusting steel boxes placed individually atop piers in the desert west of Tucson, the low-key design highlights three distinct, spectacular vistas. To move between the structures, you travel outdoor paths worn into the desert floor that weave past towering saguaros, prickly ocotillos, and metal sheathing before delivering you to an interior lined with polished maple. It may not be the most practical approach, but finding your way across an isolated patch of desert by nothing more than moonlight has other appeals.

Joy favors weathered steel (as in Desert Nomad) and rammed earth, an adobe-like process in which dirt and a sprinkling of cement are pounded into solid forms. For the nearly completed Coppola house in Napa, he turned to poured concrete and, since sustainability was a priority for both director and architect, powered the structure with solar energy. "That one's cool," Joy says. "It's totally off the grid, and it's only 3,000 square feet for a larger-than-life movie guy. It's very quiet, environmental, and peaceful." Woven between ancient oaks, the muscular single-story retreat includes a 600-square-foot gallery with a translucent ceiling that reflects dappled sunlight filtering through tree branches above. Large glass notches carved strategically into walls throughout the rest of the house bring in more patterned light, providing a constant connection to the hillsides and vineyards of the Coppola estate.

Despite his growing reputation—as a pioneer of desert architecture, as the go-to guy if you're building on precious ground, as an artist who conjures transcendent forms out of rough materials and rougher terrain, as an able drummer who still likes to get behind the kit every once in a while—Joy is cautious about delving into the ideology behind his projects. "We're just young, vibrant guys trying to do some good work," he says of his Tucson office. "And to show the old guys how it's done."— TIM McKEOUGH