This dates from 1977, what I affectionately call my Star Wars summer.
Yes, those are three-foot thick concrete walls. Guaranteed to keep out the desert heat. I remember showing the plans to a contractor who the firm I was working for kept on staff, and he was enthralled by the design. “You bring me the money, I will build this!”
The basic idea for this house stayed with me for years, finally morphing about fifteen years later into this variation:
No longer partially sunk into the ground, the three-foot thick concrete walls and very basic layout (with a few changes) remained. This is another house I spent so much time with inside my head it might as well have been built for how real it felt to me.