Peak Design: Architecture in Aspen
by Ian Volner with Sarah Broughton

Herbert Bayer, 1965. Photo by Joan Lane. Courtesy of Aspen Historical society, Lane Collection

Sooner or later, a great resort community is bound to get its own great architecture. In Miami Beach, it came in the 1930s, when a wave of Art Deco towers swept away the old Victorian hotels that had begun springing up there four decades earlier; in the Hamptons—notwithstanding a few very fine Shingle Style homes before the turn of the century—a truly native species of design didn’t evolve until the 1970s, when Norman Jaffe began turning out his chic, minimalist masterworks. But while Aspen got a later start as a high-end destination than either of those two, its architectural maturity arrived remarkably early.

In 1946, the same year that saw the founding of the Aspen Skiing Company (now Ski Co), avant-garde polymath and Bauhaus alum Herbert Bayer rolled into town, immediately becoming the darling of the local business and cultural elite. Today, while Bayer’s work remains a key part of the city’s history—and certainly the one most familiar to scholars of international modernism—there are plenty of architectural surprises in Colorado’s glamor capital, especially when it comes to residential buildings.

No one knows that better than Sarah Broughton. The art collector and architect, founder (with husband John Rowland) of award-winning firm R+B, has been a fixture of the local design scene for more than two decades. “What’s great about Aspen’s architecture is that it’s so varied,” she says. “There’s such a strong history.” Considering what makes a really great Aspen house, Broughton has a simple set of criteria: “These are houses I continually learn from—they have staying power,” she says. With that as guide, the architect narrowed down a long list of prospective candidates to a few highlights: not just the best of the best, but the Aspen-ist of the most Aspen-y houses in the Roaring Fork Valley.

Photo by Michael Brands / Mountain Home Photography

Mushroom House on Oak Ridge Dr.

Andre Ulrych was not an architect: following his arrival in Aspen (by way of Turkey, Cyprus, and points beyond) from his native Poland in the late 1960s, he operated a restaurant and later a nightclub on South Galena Street. In his spare time however, the entrepreneur created one of the more extraordinary homes in the area—the aptly named Mushroom House near West Buttermilk, a “psychedelic, spiritual building,” as Broughton calls it, and the ultimate expression of its designer’s unique philosophy. “I don’t think people were meant to live in square houses,” Ulrych told The Aspen Times in 1974.

Barbi Benton House, by Bart Prince.

You wouldn’t expect former Playboy playmate, sometime recording artist, and all-round woman of the world Barbi Benton to live just any-old-where. Sure enough, her home in Aspen is one of a kind: designed by Albuquerque-based architect Bart Prince, the medley of curving copper forms ranges down a hillside site like a series of tree houses inhabited by a race of mechanical children. Inside, things only get more astonishing, as Benton and developer husband, George Gradow, give full reign to their cosmopolitan-yet-countrified taste. “It’s completely iconic,” says Broughton. “There’s nothing else like it.”

John Lautner House in Meadowood.

In cultivating its native modernist tradition, Aspen also managed to bring out the best in architects mainly associated with other cities. John Lautner is a case in point: “It’s very grounded to the mountains,” says Broughton. “He was very site-specific.” The expressive master of Angeleno residential design brought something different to his domed, rustic creation in Meadowood, combining his typical taste for structural daring with a more rugged sensibility, covering the house in a then very novel green roof and allowing a set of massive boulders to protrude into the main living space—a chance for occupants to live not just in the Rockies, but with them.

Lake Avenue House, by Herbert Bayer.

There was bound to be one . . . Broughton might have picked any one of the outstanding houses by the founding father of Aspen modernism—not least his recently renovated Aspen Meadows Trustee Townhome—but she picked the understated, cinder-block Lake Avenue House for a specific reason. “It’s pure geometry,” she says. “It’s the essence of using industrial materials but in a very refined, elegant way.” With its modest size and simple articulation, the flat-roofed house slips quietly into a neighborhood of otherwise traditional suburban homes, demonstrating the subtlety of Bayer’s approach in bringing his brand of International Style architecture to his adopted hometown.

Mead Metcalf House off McLain Flats.

Readers may be more familiar with Mead Metcalf’s Crystal Palace, the eccentric cabaret downtown that the local impresario once ran. But his private home off McLain Flats is no less extraordinary: characterized by curved, wooden beams that extend into pods lined with clerestory windows, the building exhibits the same determinedly oddball sensibility that made Mead such a beloved local fixture. The house has special meaning for Broughton, whose firm carried out a successful restoration that spared the landmark from demolition. “Nowadays we’d call it biophilic,” she says. “It’s very imaginative.”

Peak Design: Architecture in Aspen by Ian Volner with Sarah Broughton

Related Program

Peak Design: Architecture in Aspen
by Ian Volner with Sarah Broughton