Architect: Robert A.M. Stern Architects
Robert A.M. Stern Architects is a 225-person firm of architects, landscape architects, interior designers, and supporting staff. Over its thirty-seven-year history, the firm has established an international reputation as a leading design firm with wide experience in residential, commercial, and institutional work. As the firm's practice has diversified, its geographical scope has widened to include current projects in Europe, Asia, South America, and throughout the United States.
The firm maintains an attention to detail and commitment to design quality which has earned international recognition, numerous awards and citations for design excellence, including National Honor Awards of the American Institute of Architects, and a lengthening list of repeat clients. At present, the firm is responsible for the design of approximately $500,000,000 of construction per year.
Description
Located just outside of Aspen, this house commands spectacular views of the Roaring Fork Valley and the ski slopes of Aspen Mountain and Snowmass. Avoiding the cliches of a Swiss chalet, we looked to a nobler precedent: the house is a highly compact, precisely geometrical mass inspired by Sir Edwin Lutyens's Tigbourne Court (1899).
A curving drive negotiates the steep rise from the street to the motor court, where the triple-gable entry facade provides a decisive termination to the journey. The garage lies to one side, buried into the hill behind a pergola screen. Carefully arranged pavilions and bays reduce the apparent size of the main mass of the house. The tawny granite, the mottled purple-and-green slate roof, and the natural wood trim blend with the environment. The garden elements—reflecting pool, retaining walls, wood pergolas, and terraces—further lock the house into the steeply sloping site, so that it seems set on a natural shelf or plateau rather than feeling perched on a hillside.
The interior is organized on three floors with the entrance and principal rooms on the middle level. The entry leads to a two-story vaulted hall, paved and paneled in limestone. There the axis of the entry sequence is interrupted by a fireplace mass, around which the principal rooms are arranged. To the east lies the stair with many landings to break down the vertical scale. Three rooms—one a covered porch—are arranged enfilade across the west front; at the center is the living room framing the view across the valley. The south-facing dining room enjoys a glimpse of Aspen Mountain across the reflecting pool and precisely sculpted garden sheltered by a hill that rises past it. The bedrooms are above, and below is a spa suite, including billiard and weight rooms, a racquetball court, and an indoor pool that opens to a terrace nestled in the trees.