Running Bear Residence - Steamboat Springs, Colorado

This house was designed for a professional couple. Neither had been involved with the construction of a new house and while not particularly comfortable in their understanding of architectural drawings, they had tremendous input into the design of their house from the very beginning.

Books! They had tons of books, artwork and photographs of family, and needed a place for all of them. Lyn even measured for the amount of shelves we would need. Plus, some room to grow.

While they love living in the mountains, they emphatically did not want a typical rustic mountain house. They wanted a sunny place to drink their morning coffee, read the paper and start their day. Their children are grown, and will be only visiting occasionally. Consequently, the guest rooms and closets are small. A visiting psychologist friend of theirs identified one of the closets as being “the punishment room”.

There are views of the ski mountain to the east, and to the south, west and northwest of distant mountains and the valley floor. The house, and its windows, was situated to take advantage of those views while screening adjacent houses as much as possible. The central stairwell, which is open in the middle, collects light from a number of sources and transmits that light though out the different levels of the house and visually ties the whole house together.