Modern Mountainside Homes

In Salt Lake City, a place not renowned for progressive architecture, Brent Jespersen built a luminous canyon retreat—using his architect father and a famed Utah modernist as his guides.

Passionate cooks, the Burtons installed a Mugnaini wood-fired oven in their kitchen and had a custom Grillery fireplace-barbecue built into the concrete block wall on their deck. Beneath the grill they store oak firewood collected from their property.

The home’s exteriors wrap around the side, offering additional opportunities to bask in the picturesque surroundings. Photo by: Justin Keena.

Four Box House perches on a rugged mountain-side in northern Seoul’s Pyeongchandong district, making for spectacular views.

Santiard says that there was a lot of investment in the French ski industry in the 1960s and 1970s and many of those buildings have deteriorated. The city of Les Menuires is in the middle of a five-year plan to modernize its resorts and offers some incentives to rehab older buildings if they meet certain requirements—having a lamp for each bed, a certain mattress quality, ample storage, and a well-equipped kitchen, among others. "The city really pushed us to make a little chalet inside this massive 70s building," says Santiard.

Eric Logan's guest house is adjacent to his family’s home. The interiors are made up of oiled masonite wall paneling, raw MDF cabinetry, and an oiled concrete floor.

Set amongst the Washington woods, architect Peter Anderson explains that “the floating nature of the design would not have been possible with conventional onsite framing techniques, nor any of the currently marketed modular home designs.” Photo by: John Clark