SET IN STONE
Photo by Audrey Hall
As JLF Founder Emeritus Paul Bertelli told Mountain Living magazine recently in an article dedicated to Mastering the Architectural Artistry of Biophilic Design, “We strive to articulate a sense of natural presence. Ultimately, the structure should feel inextricable from the setting, embedded in its surrounds, a building that has been and always will be.” Integral to that vision is regionally sourced fieldstone, exposed to and weathered by the environment over thousands of years, sending an enduring message of “strength, permanence; timelessness.”
That place-based approach is the bedrock of all JLF’s design-build collaborations with Big-D Signature: legacy homes that respond to their specific site’s geography and history, favoring the use of reclaimed wood – perhaps from snow fence, a deconstructed barn or corral – and rugged stone, literally of the local landscape. For the Park City Modern house, above, Bertelli took the stone’s meaning a step further, incorporating “remnant walls” to imbue the modern home with a distinct sense of history. To achieve the effect, stone masons built two-foot-thick walls capable of standing for a century – then artfully deconstructed them to reference the way regional historical structures might crumble over time.
Photos by Audrey Hall
For JLF, a stone wall isn’t a mere veneer of rocks, but a bulwark artisanally crafted from hand-selected stones stacked to be structurally sound. It is that authentic use that makes the material honest while furthering our goal of enhancing connection with the surrounding natural world. Often our stone walls originate in the interior and flow to the exterior, ultimately melding with the landscape. In a literal indoor-outdoor connection visible in the Jackson Hole-area Forest Edge house, shown above, glass-and-steel window walls reveal that structural aspect, exposing the continuation of the stacked stone beyond the glass.
Photo by Laura Resen
For the great room of the Shooting Star house, above, designed for a family of six, natural and indigenous Montana moss rock walls were carefully constructed by Big-D Signature to seamlessly join adjacent reclaimed wood and large panels of glass. In contrast with the solidity and earthiness of the central wall of stacked fieldstone, a sculptural staircase appears to float nearby, allowing see-through views to a dramatic two-story window wall, its airiness enhanced by the juxtaposition. And although providing naturally rustic textural interest for the interior, the stone is stacked to create clean-lined corners and doorways that ultimately trend modern in the context of JLF’s use of glass and steel for the soaring space.
The specific choice of stone for a residence can impart a very different aesthetic based on the size, shape and color of the material selected. In another JLF and Big-D Signature design-build house, known as Aspen Meadows, stones in paler tones are additionally lightened with creamy mortar joints to project stone’s message of strength and permanence but with a Mountain Modern feel. And the decision to combine the stone with white plaster and painted wood walls, steel rather than timber trusses, and a broad expanse of floor-to-ceiling windows, further moves the material into the modern realm while retaining its inherent connection to history and the surrounding natural world.
As we wrote in our book Foundations, “The most sustainable thing we can do is design a house that will still be there in 100 years, a place where people can gather for generations to come” – with enduring stone as a central piece of that timeless equation.
