This 10,000-square-foot home in Aspen is situated on a four-acre estate and surrounded by a heavily wooded landscape, streams, and mountains. We navigated highly restrictive development codes to design and build at scale, and realize a home completely shrouded/enveloped by its setting.

A doyenne of the design world, the client envisioned a legacy home where extended family could gather and be engulfed in comfort amidst the Rocky Mountains. It was important that our design didn’t impose itself on the land, so we ensured that much of the original terrain and natural landscape remained intact.

To achieve this, we created a vast, pre-cast concrete bridge across a small river flowing through the site, and intersecting glazed volumes of exposed concrete, steel, and wood. Dramatic shifts in scale maximize privacy and optimize views through strategically placed, oversized windows, combining interior and exterior spaces. The home strategically crouches down low within the site’s topography, revealing itself at certain vantage points.

Here, the light of the sky, the reflections of water, the smell of flora and fauna, and the patterns formed by the wind inform this unique architecture. Erasing any boundaries with the natural environment, Bridge House captures that delicate balance between dramatic design and intimate sanctuary.