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Architects: will bruder+PARTNERS
- Area: 5829 ft²
- Year: 2015
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Photographs:Bill Timmerman
Text description provided by the architects. The Blackbird House is located on a small cul de sac lot three blocks from the main ski lift in downtown Aspen. The site offers spectacular 360-degree views. In a neighborhood of modest mid-century modern houses and apartments, the architecture’s floor plan and section are a creative response to the town’s urban form-based zoning codes.
While generous the project respects a building scale complimentary to the community’s historic fabric of wood-sided one bedroom miner’s cabins and delicately detailed 19th Century Victorian homes.
The plan geometry is shaped by the arch of the cul de sac’s center point and the radial north and south edges of the home’s 0.21 acre site. The height is sensitively responsive to the town of Aspen’s desire to maintain a comfortable small town human scale.
The relatively modest cul de sac facing entry is richly detailed with vertical charred (Shou-Sugi-Ban Cypress boards and custom formed standing seam anthra-zinc metal cladding). Generous window apertures are placed to capture the surrounding views while the architecture visually recedes into the shadows of the aspen and conifer trees that surround it.
Upon entry a dramatically sky lit stair of hot-rolled oiled steel plates and perforated sheet takes the eye toward a grand window view of Aspen Mountain famed ski-lift. Three first level bedroom suites and generously scaled day lit lower level fourth bedroom suite and a flex room for media and exercise, create a dynamic plinth for the home’s main upper level pavilion. Energized by the ‘origami-like’ folded planes of the main floors lofty ceiling, dynamic plan shifts and vast vistas, the ‘great room’ (living, dining, and kitchen) and the main master bedroom suite are at the core of this mountain chalet.
Interior finishes include polished reflective white diamond troweled plaster walls and ceilings, doors and cabinets of white rift sawn oak, floors of engineered walnut, large format porcelain tile or carpet, and fireplaces and bathing chambers clad in thin stone. The architecture is designed to be a ‘rustically’ refined backdrop for a sophisticated, indoor/outdoor contemporary lifestyle where all of one’s senses are engaged and enhanced throughout the seasons of Aspen.
