Single-Family Home
Elliptical Alpine Home Leaves a Gentle Footprint with Wood
Perched on a mountainside at 9,000 feet above sea level, this nearly all-wood elliptical home, designed by renowned Canadian architect Brian MacKay-Lyons, draws on his deep roots in regionalism, material honesty, and a pragmatic yet poetic response to climate and landscape. Framed in wood, clad in cedar and supported by steel stilts, its curvaceous, elevated form sheds snow, minimizes wind resistance, and touches the land with a deliberately light footprint.
Wood, Wind, and Mountain Light: Designing with Nature and
Weather in Mind
“As an architect, you always carry something with you in your ‘doctor’s bag’—a set of best practices refined over time—while also responding as closely as possible to the local climate and terrain,” MacKay-Lyons says.
So when a client approached him to design a five-bedroom ski house on a remote, windswept site in the U.S. Intermountain Region with a 30% slope and 40 feet of annual snowfall, the Halifax-based architect took inspiration from his roots: the maritime tradition of resilient, raised wooden structures designed to withstand severe conditions.
House at 9,000 Feet
“The decision to raise the house on stilts, and build it entirely of light-frame wood construction, is not unlike something we might do in Nova Scotia—where we elevate buildings, such as ocean sheds, as a practical design solution,” MacKay-Lyons says. In such a snowy, mountainous region, light-frame wood construction was not only easier to transport along twisting alpine roads but also sped up construction in the limited building season.
The elliptical form, developed in response to the project’s extreme site conditions and climate, also met the client’s request to simultaneously make a statement while blending into the surroundings. With a location that experiences some of the strongest winds in the U.S., the house’s lenticular shape not only offers an aerodynamic form but also helps stay within the site’s strict 26-foot height restrictions. The raised belly of the home makes way for large, sweeping snowdrifts, and the curved roofline mitigates the region’s harsh, unrelenting sun.
House at 9,000 Feet
House at 9,000 Feet
House at 9,000 Feet
House at 9,000 Feet
A Light Footprint on the Mountain
Arriving from the road above, visitors first take in the home’s sweeping cedar-clad form against the alpine backdrop, its curved roofline echoing the ridges beyond. To tackle the challenging terrain, the house needed to be inverted, MacKay-Lyons says, because “unless you’re Santa Claus, you couldn’t get in. You got 40 feet of snow to contend with, so we designed it to arrive high and then made a ritual out of dropping down into the main living space.”
Both pedestrians and vehicles approach the house via a perforated steel bridge as if crossing into the landscape itself. Upon entry, a transparent stair—illuminated from above by a skylight—guides visitors downward. The descent opens into the great room, a space both monumental and intimate, where a soaring, curved cedar ceiling frames an expansive view to the south.
An 88-foot-long window seat that runs along that south façade serves as a place of refuge as well as a passive solar strategy, diffusing sunlight while framing the rugged beauty of the valley. To the west, a covered deck extends the living space outward, offering sunset views over the terrain. On the opposite end, the primary bedroom and media room provide a more enclosed retreat.
House at 9,000 Feet
House at 9,000 Feet
A single cast-in-place concrete core anchors the structure and houses four guest bedrooms across two levels. The ground floor—integrated seamlessly into the landscape—features a ski-in/ski-out entry, emphasizing the home’s deep connection to both the site and the alpine lifestyle.
“It’s a flying building rather than a floating building, because getting concrete on top of the mountain is very difficult and expensive,” MacKay-Lyons says. “The idea was to touch the land lightly and not have any more concrete than absolutely necessary. And the client demanded a total wood design inside and out.”
The entire exterior of the house is clad in 2-by-6 small-knot cedar, fastened atop a galvanized channel exoskeleton and white PVC waterproofing membrane, then finished with a galvanized-steel knife edge. The untreated exterior Western red cedar is designed to weather naturally over time.
House at 9,000 Feet
Inside, walls are finished in clear, straight-grain cedar, complemented by engineered white ash flooring throughout. “We used the wood differently depending on if it’s heavy service areas like floors and cabinets. White ash for the flooring and cedar for the cladding—letting the softwood do what it does best and let the hardwood do what it does best,” MacKay-Lyons says. The interior wood is finished with a clear, water-based sealer, maintaining a more consistent, uniform appearance.
While unique in its form and design, overall the 4,440-square-foot wood-built home carries MacKay-Lyons’ sturdy, signature look and longstanding reliance on passive design principles. “The more things change, the more they stay the same,” MacKay-Lyons says. “Sometimes it’s better to be a visitor in a different climate—there are things you see more clearly as an outsider,” he explains, contemplating how his maritime sensibilities found resonance in an alpine home set in the high desert of the Intermountain West.
He adds: “It’s really about responding to the site and climate with practical curiosity. I like to think like a farmer or think like a builder or think like a fisherman. There’s just common sense to it. You don’t need a PhD to figure out where the wind comes from or where the sun shines the brightest. You can just pay attention, and work with it.”
House at 9,000 Feet
Project Details
- Project:
- House at 9,000 Feet
- Architect:
- Builder:
- Structural Engineer:
- Location:
- Intermountain Region of the United States
- Completed:
- 2022
- Size:
- 4,400 square feet
