DESIGN ELEMENT: DREAM AMENITIES AND SPECIALTY SPACES

Collaboration is the norm for JLF Architects with design-build construction partner Big-D Signature – and often an interior designer, landscape architect, engineer, craftspeople or other subcontractors. But always, key collaborators are the homeowners, whose dreams become reality as a project evolves – incorporating their personal requests and desired functions. “Outdoor showers (the one pictured is from the team’s Tennessee project known as Hidden Lake), a  garage turntable, fly-tying room, pottery shed, sauna, whiskey/cigar room, golf simulator,” says Big-D Signature vice president Shandon Brinkerhoff, rattling off just a few of the requested spaces the design-build team has created. “Customers continue to make these projects their own by specializing specific-use spaces. It’s what continues to add character to our projects, and we welcome it as we always want to give the customer exactly what they dream of.”

Wine cellars and home wet bars have become nearly de rigueur in recent years for legacy homes where entertaining is a favorite pastime, but the variations are endless. For the True North house in Jackson Hole, the wine closet was customized with colored LED lights (above left), and the wet bar is bathed in natural light through wide windows, with transparent shelves storing clear glassware so as not to interfere with Snake River views (center). Sometimes, inspiration strikes late in a project and the team’s collaborative process allows them to address changes in the field, as at True North, where the homeowners took a look at the new home office’s flat roof and dreamed of an observation deck with unobstructed views. “Being able to adapt to these last-minute changes has become second nature to our project teams and processes,” says Brinkerhoff of the design solution of a spiral staircase from the lower patio (above right) to create access.

Especially for ski-in, ski-out houses, like the Park City Modern project pictured above, what might be a mud room in another house becomes a specialized space for storing snow sports equipment – including ample room and inventive seating to make changing in and out of bulky ski and snowboarding boots easy. Storage lockers are custom designed for both function and beauty, and plentiful enough to accommodate a crowd; here, screened inserts offer a dynamic metallic geometrical pattern while allowing air to circulate and dry wet gear. Elsewhere in the house, special requests took a more strictly decorative turn. In a proprietary process, walnut wood was sliced into translucent blue panels and melded into cabinetry to create a “wall of walnut trees,” both around the home bar, as pictured, and in the kitchen.

Another favorite specialty space is a home gym, sometimes incorporating a sauna, separate changing room or direct access to outside trails or a lap pool. A glass wall separates the home gym in the Wasatch Range Revival Home, shown above – which features rubber commercial gym flooring for low impact – from the larger game room that includes table tennis.

Whatever customization a homeowner envisions, the JLF Architects/Big-D Signature design-build team will deliver, even if it requires inventing something entirely new, as they did in creating the piers that support the on-water pavilion shown in the outdoor shower image at the top of this post. Rising to those kinds of challenges, however unusual, is part of the fun, says Brinkerhoff: “It’s gratifying to see homeowners’ excitement as their specific space takes shape. It is always very meaningful to them and it is especially rewarding to see and hear about how much they use these spaces and appreciate the time and effort that everyone put into them.”