What is Lifestyle Design?

Living in a small, lifestyle town with a heavy emphasis on recreation inherently impacts the design and how people expect to dwell. So what does that mean? We put together a list of a few things unique to our little slice of heaven and how it informs our design principals:

1) Sitting between two mountains with a river in between means that the NUMBER ONE room people are most concerned about is the mudroom.

It’s all about the gear storage, wide seasonal shifts, mitigating mud and dirt. We spend a lot of time on this room to be sure our clients know where everything is going and to be sure it will withstand wear and tear.

2) Also due to the mountains and river, we are a big hub for second home owners or retirees.

People want to recreate. This is the home away from home. A retreat. Because it isn’t their main primary residence, the expectation to be a place of refuge and rest is that much higher.

3) We heavy winds (that’s why we are the kiteboarding headquarters for the USA baby!).

This drives the need to really “anchor” structures into the landscape. They are designed to be an extension of the land, not just placed on it.

4) People want to host large gatherings.

We tend to have larger footprint homes where the goal is to be able to bring their families for a retreat. One house we just finished has 11 beds. They really wanted to have a place all their friends and family could come and stay at to enjoy.

5) The convergence of modernism and deep, rustic roots.

Generally speaking, we are moving more towards modern shapes and more edgy styles. But, there still is a deep desire to have the dwelling feel older and heavy. Very much Mountain Modern (check out our other blog post on that for more info).