concepts · updated 2026-08-10
Monte Vista School
confidence: medium volatility: cold verified: 2026-08-10fresh
An Albuquerque school with a 240 sq ft attached passive solar greenhouse designed by Dave Harrison of Zomeworks in 1973 — the earliest documented Beadwall installation in the archive. Water-filled black drums store direct gain behind south-facing double glazing; styrofoam beads are blown into the 3-inch glazing cavity on winter nights and summer days. Photographed in Sunspots (1975) as the "Monte Vista Beadwall Greenhouse."
A school in Albuquerque, New Mexico, with a passive solar greenhouse designed in 1973 by Dave Harrison of Zomeworks and attached to the school building. It is the earliest documented Beadwall installation in the archive, and one of the projects Baer chose for his 2009 AIA passive solar slideshow survey of the New Mexico passive solar canon.
The greenhouse
The fullest documentation is the AIA survey data sheet reproduced in Baer’s 2009 slideshow (slide 12; card “SUNSPACE — NO. 15,” from A Survey of Passive Solar Buildings, AIA Research Corporation, 1976): “Monte Vista School—1973, Albuquerque, New Mexico, David Harrison, Zomeworks, Designer.”
- Building: 240 sq ft of greenhouse attached to a school building; the south face glazed and insulated to optimize passive solar heating.
- Solar system: Direct gain through south-facing plastic double glazing with a 3-inch air space. The sun hits black-painted, water-filled drums; heat is distributed by radiation and convection from the 38 water drums (the card’s preceding phrase renders the count garbled in the scan as “37°F gallon drums”).
- Beadwall operation: Styrofoam insulation beads are blown into the 3-inch air space on winter nights to prevent heat loss, and on summer days to prevent unwanted heat gain.
- Cooling: The beadwall glazing on the south doubles as shading from direct radiation and insulation against summer heat gain.
- Auxiliary heat: None used. The card’s performance-evaluation field is blank.
- Site climatic data (per the card): 35°N, 5310 ft altitude, 4348 heating degree days, 17°F design winter temperature, 92°F design summer temperature.
In Sunspots
The greenhouse is photographed in [[concepts/sunspots|Sunspots]] (1975) as the “Monte Vista Beadwall Greenhouse” — top photo: filling; bottom photo: emptying — accompanying the Beadwall section (6.5) of Chapter 6, where Harrison’s invention is described as filled and emptied by an ordinary vacuum cleaner.
Significance
Monte Vista is where Harrison’s Beadwall first appears as a built installation in the archive record, seven years before his Frank’s House in Placitas (1980), and in a public school rather than a private residence. It combines two Zomeworks signatures — water-drum thermal storage in the DrumWall lineage and switchable pneumatic window insulation — with no auxiliary heat. The archive holds no performance data for it: the AIA survey card and the Sunspots photographs are the extent of the documentation.