Search Results for: living with nature

Berlin Architects and Cairn Landscape Architects worked diligently and intelligently to create a home that sits softly on the landscape.

One of the home’s most impactful moments is the large custom window seat upholstered in silk mohair. The green-hued fabric harmonizes perfectly with the living room fireplace’s Montana moss rock, custom bronze doors, and reclaimed wood mantle. 

Originally based in Washington D.C., the homeowners—she’s a renowned writer; he’s an attorney—had been visiting Jackson for 25 years and wanted a permanent family retreat and legacy home that embraced the landscape. “The house is intentionally modest, respecting and honoring this awe-inspiring place,” says Scott Zabriskie, senior project manager at Berlin Architects, which collaborated with Cairn Landscape Architects and interior designer Julia Leibowitz on the 5,947-square-foot, 5-bed, 5.5-bath home in the northern part of Jackson Hole. “It’s a quieter architecture with less ego and more nature,” Zabriskie says. The simple expression of the landscape architecture and the interior design’s minimalist aesthetic aligns with the overall architecture. “It all feels very pure and of the same yarn,” Zabriskie says.

The architecture embraces the land with long, low roof eaves rising subtly but distinctively, expressing their layered timber structure and echoing the horizon’s mountain profile. Large openings amplify the home’s transparency, where living spaces become open pavilions full of light and views. Maximizing the Teton panoramas was a guiding principle, and the team even employed a drone to establish the optimal height to capture the Gros Ventre Range’s iconic Sheep Mountain from the home’s second-story deck.

Because of the scale of the home, interior designer Julia Leibowitz selected mostly new or custom furniture, but she also added character with vintage and antique pieces, like the 1930s Art Deco Swedish Monk Chair that sits in the corner of the stair hall.

The design prioritizes clean lines and forms created with rough textures and raw materials like tight-knot, tongue-and-groove cedar siding; painted sheet steel; Montana moss rock; and standing seam metal roofs. Berlin composed an intentionally understated entry, but with an oversized reclaimed timber door that opens to frame the Tetons straight ahead, again making nature the focus.

The homeowner is a prolific cook and baker who was wary of marble’s upkeep, so Leibowitz chose a slab of marble-esque quartzite with subtle green veining for the kitchen countertops, the statement backsplash behind the stove, and the apron front of the custom-fabricated farmhouse sink.

The layout features public spaces on the ground floor flanked by a guest wing and the primary suite with a statement-making stairway to a lofted second floor with guest bedrooms, an office, and a sun deck. Framed by a two-story window, the articulated sculptural staircase is a focal point—from inside and out. At night, the multi-tiered lighting installation hovering above creates a breathtaking design moment. Construction was an engineering feat: steel stringers were laser-cut from one-inch-thick plate steel and then clad in wood. The resulting impression is of delicate steps floating in space. “The stairs have the appearance of lightness, but the concealed support is substantial,” Zabriskie says.

Three distinct and simple gables maximize the glass, capitalizing on nature, light, and views and allowing the architecture to breathe and interact in its environment.

The stream that flows through the property, swelling to a pond in spring, was a prominent feature that Cairn Landscape Architects incorporated into the entry experience. “The clients loved the idea of connecting to the surrounding riparian ecosystem,” says Cairn Landscape Architects founder Hans Flinch. Instead of building a simple culvert, Cairn designed a wooden auto bridge over the creek. “Ecologically, this connects the stream better, and experientially you feel the wooden texture as you drive across. It gives it this whole feeling of entrance,” Flinch says.

“The house is intentionally modest, respecting and honoring this awe-inspiring place.”
—scott zabriskie, Berlin Architects

To achieve a rustic contemporary minimalism, designers employed matte finishes, from the natural white oak flooring to the hemlock wood ceilings to the flat-sawn white oak cabinetry, which was stained, cerused, and wire brushed. 

“The clients wanted outdoor living spaces to feel like an extension of the indoors,” Flinch says. “Each wing has its own distinct, contemplative garden that relates to the interior.” Flinch used a palette of primarily native plants, including aspen, spruce, and flowering shrubs for restoration and screening. The homeowners especially love the breakfast terrace situated near the entryway. “The home was originally conceived as a writing retreat, and the client wanted these intimate meditative spaces,” Flinch says. Cairn designed the space with low stone walls, custom-built recycled aluminum planters, and large-format frontier stone pavers. They filled out the garden with colorful pollinator-friendly perennials like catmint, columbine, and yarrow. “The major elements like terraces and trees were carefully aligned with elements on the building, creating a clear sense of rhythm and sense of ease, while the perennials were allowed to be a little wilder,” Flinch says.

On the north side, Cairn imagined an outdoor extension of the great room with expansive views of the Grand Teton. They collaborated with Berlin to design a covered outdoor kitchen, a series of terraces, and a thoughtfully sized lawn with a gas-burning firepit. “Wherever possible, we used the same materials used on the building,” Flinch says. The spa tub, for example, is wrapped in the same Montana moss rock as the exterior wainscotting and the great room fireplace. “We wanted it to feel cohesive.”

Julia Leibowitz headed the project’s interior design. She chose natural white oak flooring and hemlock wood on the ceilings. The kitchen’s cabinetry features a flat-sawn white oak that’s been stained, cerused, and wire brushed. The textural American clay plaster on the walls reflects natural light throughout the day. “It was important to me that finishes were matte to fit the rustic minimalist aesthetic,” Leibowitz says. “We wanted to mimic what was going on in the landscape—and there’s nothing really shiny in nature.”

The outdoor spa terrace, wrapped in Montana moss rock and topped with a frontier sandstone coping, sits in full view of the Grand Teton. Native shade-loving perennials soften the sharp edges of the hardscape while offering a sense of enclosure.

The home’s second floor, lofted above the great room, features guest bedrooms, an office, and a sun deck.

Furnishings are a mix of new, custom, and antique, including a 1930s Swedish monk chair and a 1920s Jacques Adnet table lamp. The custom 11-foot cerused-oak dining table, with its weighty timber base, counterbalances the futuristic patinated brass light fixture above. “I tried to pay tasteful homage to the Western setting while offsetting it with more modern elements,” Liebowitz says.

She also employed a serene, muted color palette inspired by nature, with pops of green that evoke the sagebrush. She upholstered the cushions of the great room’s window seat in a green Rogers & Goffigon silk mohair. Tucked next to the grand fireplace, it’s become a favorite perch—to pause, to write, to soak in the Teton views.

The main entryway is designed as a subtle prelude, allowing the home’s floating sculptural staircase, framed by a two-story front window, to take center stage.

> Story by Richard Anderson
> Photography by David Agnello and David Swift

The north face of Snow King Mountain offers wondrous views of the National Elk Refuge, Grand Teton National Park and, on clear days, the southern reaches of Yellowstone—with the added embellishment of downtown Jackson’s dynamic urban center in the foreground.

However, the north face of Snow King is also dark. Between the shadow of the mountain peak and the shade of the dense forest, getting light into living spaces is a challenge that requires creative solutions.

For a recent residence project on Snow King, Dynia Architects addressed this challenge with a three-story, vertically organized scheme that placed the primary spaces—living, dining, kitchen, and master suite—at the top, and secondary spaces—studies, library and guest rooms—on the middle level below. The ground floor, carved deep into the slope and devoid of daylight, became the ideal location for garage and utility functions.

The challenge to this approach, as Stephen Dynia, the project’s designer, points out, is “to create a compelling vertical circulation space that will entice you to the top floor and, once there, a living space that powerfully connects with the magnificent landscape, a place that makes the journey worthwhile.”

Setting: Snow King residences face two basic challenges: the steep hillside building site and the shadowy, north-facing aspects.
Life 360: The living-dining-kitchen space allows for views straight through from south to north, making the most of natural light and the ever-changing view to the north.
Clean Angles: The dimensions of the stainless-steel, gas-burning fireplace in the living room mimic the wide, panoramic vista afforded by the north-facing wall of glass looking out over the town of Jackson, the National Elk Refuge, and endless Wyoming sky.
Interior Equilibrium: “The finishes and furnishings are a wonderful balance of the Mountain West paired with the homeowners’ urban roots,” Jacque Jenkins-Stireman says of her design approach.

The first goal is achieved in the form of a generously sky-lit stair atrium that draws people toward ever-changing daylight animated by the boughs of pine trees above. The two runs of stairs are shifted to ease their visual length, with the upper stair more directly connecting the two elevated living floors, and the lower stair serving the entry.

One arrives at the uphill end of the top floor and turns 180 degrees to face an infinite, iconic landscape. The layout—an open plan that includes kitchen, dining and living areas—blends with nature as you approach the bi-fold glass wall that opens to extend the living environment onto a deep terrace across the face of the house, further integrating interior space with nature. The terrace, also accessed from the master suite, includes a central gas fireplace and is ideal for outdoor sleeping. Inside, the master suite is separated from the common area by the day-lit atrium, which filters light to all spaces.

Karen Parent, senior project architect from Dynia Architects, managed the process through completion, working closely with the homeowners to develop a palette of texture and color to enhance the architecture—both outside and inside. The objective, Parent adds, “is to fully understand the owners’ sensibilities when selecting things like wood species for the siding, ceiling, and cabinets; the exact tone of the concrete walls and floor; paint color; and lighting.”

Ascent: Direct sunlight pours through skylights over the staircase, luring visitors up from darker nether floors and suffusing the uppermost floor with warmth.
Custom Furniture: The dining room table, built by contractor John Walker, consists of a vast mass of wood magically suspended by a single support, reinforcing the effortless flow of light and air through the space.
Raised Rest: Walker also built the bed platform in the guest room, which, while in the darker, rear side of the home, still feels bright and airy thanks to a wall of glass opening onto the woods.

One highlight that came from this owner-architect relationship is a wall of black pebbles in the shower that is illuminated obliquely by a skylight above to stunning textural effect. “We as architects do not draw a line between the exterior and interior of a house. It is a holistic endeavor that results in a unified environment, and furthers the owners’ connection to this beautiful, natural environment,” Dynia says.

The carefully considered design approach also made for an exciting construction project, says John Walker, owner of Mill Iron Timberworks, who has been working with Dynia since 1997. “The small, steep site, the spatial divide on each level, and the simplicity of the finished details required thoughtful planning and close collaboration with the architect,” Walker says of the project he and his crew began in the summer of 2012.

“Modern homes must be constructed with incredible precision because you can’t cover up joints with superfluous elements like molding and trim. I enjoy working through these challenges with the architect,” Walker elaborates. The challenge is similar when it comes to furnishing interiors, Jacque Jenkins-Stireman, the project’s interior designer, concurs. “You have to be mindful of absolutely everything that goes into the space,” she says. “Everything has to be very clean. The objective for me was to provide beautiful, functional furnishings and finishes that support the architecture and the landscape alike.”

That meant a lot of custom work—much of it done by Walker—including the solid-oak dining room table that Stireman declares “an engineering feat.” A solid, 3-inch-thick slab of wood seems magically suspended by a single metal support. “There’s no heavy base, no chunky legs, no carving,” Stireman says. “It’s spectacular. It’s a very functional piece that doesn’t take away from the architecture. You see through the table allowing the light to continue through the space, maintaining the flow from the inside to the outside.”

The guest bedrooms provide another example. Of modest size and simply furnished—there’s really just one piece of furniture, the sleeping platform, also crafted by Walker in his Thayne cabinet shop—they contain walls of glass looking into the woods of the backyard. “You feel like you’re sleeping outside,” Stireman says.

At 4,200 square feet, it’s a generously sized home that balances openness and intimacy. “The homeowners didn’t want enormous spaces,” says Dynia. “They wanted it integrated, fairly compact.”

And with the entirety of Jackson Hole right outside their plentiful windows, they got the best of both worlds.

Home Sweet Home: The owners’ adored dogs, Linus and Lingling, enjoy easy access to the outdoors through the rear of the home, which opens onto a spacious terrace and the natural landscape of Snow King Mountain.

Ankeny Architecture and Design and Helius Lighting Group collaborate on an East Jackson home informed by the clients’ deep understanding of what they want.

While the couple knew what they wanted, “it was a challenging site,” the architect says. “It faced three streets, including busy Broadway.” Siting the more private entrance side of the house up against the Gill Addition neighborhood and orienting the larger back windows out toward Broadway Avenue and Snow King views was an easy choice. “And then we’d have a nice buffer of landscaping between the back of the house and Broadway,” Ankeny says.

While the clients wanted a fireplace, they did not want a double-sided fireplace. “The client didn’t want the fireplace coming into the kitchen,” architect Shawn Ankeny says. “She preferred to have more space and more display space, so we came up with the built-in piece that Willow Creek Woodworks’ Jaxon Ching made on the back of the fireplace stone volume.”

The stone in the great room—on the fireplace and the wall opposite it—is the same stone as on parts of the home’s exterior. “Natural stone, white oak floors, painted trim to match the walls, and strategically placed reclaimed ceiling beams—a limited materials palette is easy on the eyes and has a very warm, zen feeling,” Ankeny says.

Inside, the couple knew they wanted the kitchen, great room (with a wood-burning fireplace), and primary suite on the first floor. They wanted the latter to have an oversize walk-in closet and his-and-hers bathrooms that opened to each other. The second floor has a sitting room with a covered terrace and a guest suite. Ankeny devised the house as two staggered “bars”—one with the one-story primary suite and the other with the two-story guest suite—connected by a one-story great room and entry. “The building itself is not symmetrical, but it is balanced, and elements inside of it, like the great room, are symmetrical,” Ankeny says. “The home has clean lines, lots of natural light, and a limited and natural materials palette.”

“The home has clean lines, lots of natural light, and a limited and natural materials palette.”
—shawn ankeny, ankeny architecture and Design

The Heart of the House

Early in the design process, there was no doubt that the heart of this home would be the great room, even if the clients instructed Ankeny not to make it “too big.” Anchored by stone-clad walls at either end—one of these is the requested fireplace—the long sides are glass. Each of these glass walls is three doors that slide open. “The permeable sides let the landscape in, but in winter you can keep the doors closed and feel cozy,” Ankeny says. Helius Lighting Group’s program in this space emphasizes the twin stone-clad walls. “The lighting is focused on the two key end walls. This emphasizes this architectural element while allowing the rest of the room to remain soft and cozy,” says Jarron Pew, a partner at Utah-based Helius Lighting Group. Auto shades with integrated pockets line the glass sides.

Adjacent to the great room is a bar. “The clients love entertaining,” Ankeny says. “A bar where they could do this was an important space, and it serves as a connection between the great room and more private sitting room.”

High Ceilings

“The clients really wanted 12-foot ceilings everywhere,” says Ankeny, who had never done that in a project before. (“Usually I have step-down halls and lower ceilings in bedrooms,” the architect says.) “It gives the house a very grand feeling and just lets in so much light.” Scaled to match the ceiling height, a 12-inch-tall baseboard was used throughout the home. All of the natural light worked well with the client’s ask that there be minimal recessed and architectural lighting. “This was a unique project because the client really loves table lamps and is comfortable with them providing most lighting,” Pew says. “Recessed lighting was kept to a minimum to provide simple accents, or to focus on needed tasks. Generally, this project has less recessed lighting, which provides a softer feel.”

There is one area with nine-foot ceilings, the breakfast nook. “It’s not that the ceilings here are low, but the difference between this space and the rest of the house just makes this space that much more intimate,” Ankeny says.

The path to the house in both the front and back yards is not linear, but has a jog in it. “I like the feeling of not walking straight into the house. It’s a small move, but it makes it feel like you’re exploring as you go in,” Ankeny says.

For the Dogs

A fun, and not a wholly unusual, request in Jackson Hole where homeowners really love their dogs was for all of the rooms on the main floor to open to the outside and for windows to go down to the floor. “The house had to open to the outside from the primary suite, the great room, the kitchen, and the dining room for the dogs,” Ankeny says. “And they wanted a big backyard for the dogs, which was nice because it also put the house farther from Broadway, which is a busy street.” Why windows to the floor? “So the dogs can see out,” Ankeny says.

Hidden in Plain Sight

The clients wanted most things built-in. “There are cabinets in almost every room,” Ankeny says. “And they really contribute to the contemporary nature of the house. Everything can be hidden behind flush cabinets.” Even lights are hidden in the cabinets. “In the primary closet, Jaxon [Ching, of Willow Creek Woodworks] built lights into the millwork instead of us planning for fixtures on the outside aimed in,” Pew says. In the kitchen, lighting in the display case makes it a decorative feature of what Pew says could have been a dark hole. “The integral cabinet lighting brings depth to the room instead of it being a cabinet wall that is a light void. [Jaxon] did a great job,” Ankeny says.

More empirical asks included three bedroom suites similar in size and views—the client has three daughters—a primary suite detached from the family and guest rooms; accessory rooms including a library, billiard room, and exercise room; a combined kitchen/dining/living space; a bunk room for guests; and a “hidden garage,” Blake says. “He liked the way we had hidden garages in other projects and wanted to do that here.” And the client wanted views. From the site, you can see the entire expanse of the Teton Range and, hundreds of feet below on the valley floor, some of the valley’s historic (and still working) cattle ranches.

An award-winning Ward | Blake home on the Ridge at Spring Creek is a light-filled, organic extension of East Gros Ventre Butte.

Because the home would be on a ridge, Teton County’s “skylining” regulations also factored into siting and design. Put in place to preserve the valley’s topographical ecosystem, these land development regulations state that a ridgeline home must be sited and designed in a way that preserves the view of that ridgeline when seen from any county road.

And then there were the features that Jackson-based Ward | Blake brings into all of its projects: a connection between the inside and out; energy efficiency; natural light; and a thoughtful, measured, and meaningful materials palette. All this was a tall order, but “this project and site were a good fit for us,” says firm cofounder Tom Ward.

“Visually, the house is transparent—the massing is a combination of stone and glass with thin steel components that provide delicacy to the detailing. The heavy stone forms are visually lightened by the large glass openings while they connect seamlessly to the site like a natural outcropping,” says Blake. “It’s a real juxtaposition to the stone and steel and is a good manifestation of something we always try to do—articulate massing and materials. In this instance, the distinction is razor sharp.”

Initial Thoughts

“Because it is a hillside lot, we immediately thought about ‘slicing’ the house into the hillside to make it fit the natural contours,” Blake says. The client had asked only for a hidden garage, but Blake and Ward’s design integrated most of the home into the hillside. “It looks like it is emerging out of the slope, capturing big views and the sky and sunlight,” Blake says.

While big walls of glass can decrease a home’s energy efficiency, these windows are triple glazed. “The thermal properties of these windows are much more enhanced than even what was available just 10 years ago,” Tom Ward says.

Ward and Blake also had ideas about using the exterior materials palette to articulate function and reinforce massing, proportions, and rhythm. “Arbitrary and meaningless changes in materials proliferate in bad modern architecture,” Ward says. “In this project, changing materials respond to the floor plan and/or are a direct response to us trying to enhance or connect with the site.”

Big Views with Big Benefits

Much of the house that opens up from its “slice” within the hillside is glass. The views are stunning—from any room, you can see the entirety of the Teton range. But all of this glass is not only about the views. “Windows bring in natural light, which makes a house pleasant and brings a passive solar aspect,” Ward says. Blake adds, “They create a connection to nature. With a lot of windows, you are very aware of what’s happening outside.” Windows and natural light also create a dialogue between inside and outside. “When there’s low light, snow on the ground, and sub-zero temps in the winter, the house feels one way,” Ward says. “In summer, when everything is green, it’s a very different feel.”

This connection to the outside from inside is an increasingly popular concept in architecture and is called biophilic design. (Biophilic design was on Ward’s and Blake’s radars long before it was a thing, though.) According to ArchDaily, “The main principle behind biophilia is rather simple: connecting humans with nature to improve well-being.” Biophilic design creates spaces that connect humans with nature. “In this house, you’re never wondering what it’s like outside,” Ward says. “You can’t help but feel connected to it.”

Vignettes and Details

Biophilic design is a type of architecture that connects humans with nature to increase well-being. This can be achieved in many ways, including large windows, green roofs, a natural materials palette, and materiality flowing from inside to out.

The Ridge 52 Residence won a 2023 BLT Built Design Award
– Architectural Design/Residential

While the wall of windows facing the Tetons offers the most dramatic views, “We wanted it to be a fun and interesting experience to move through the house and have it open up in different ways,” Blake says. “You catch glimpses as you travel up and down stairs and as you walk down hallways.” All of the home’s main corridors have large glass windows at their end, including on the basement level. (We wonder if there are any other homes in the valley in which a basement hallway ends with a view of the Grand Teton?) “There are no dead-end corridors,” Ward says.

Low-slope shed roofs reach beyond the house to protect exterior spaces on the outdoor terraces and also provide solar control for interior spaces.

When you tear your gaze from outside, you might notice the interior’s intricate steel detailing. “Instead of using wood trim, we used metal trim,” Blake says. “We expressed exposed steel all over the house, which we had done with components or furniture before, but this was the first time we applied it as a part of the language of the house.” This required a level of exacting precision from the builder. “In a conventional house with wood trim, there is a fair amount of margin for error—you can cover up a lot with trim, but in this house, there’s no trim behind which to hide,” Ward says.