"I wanted to live in a snow globe, with as much glass as I could have,” homeowner Antonia Meade says of the Aspen residence on Red Mountain that she shares with her husband, Ronnie, and their teenage daughter. That’s what architect Charles Cunniffe delivered. The mountainside structure he devised has one side almost entirely sheathed in glass (see the great room’s row of 12-foot-high, 7-foot-wide glass panels, among other examples), keeping a panoramic display of every celebrated mountain visible on an endless reel: Pyramid Peak, Snowmass, Independence Pass, Mount Sopris, Ajax Mountain, Aspen Highlands, Buttermilk, the Maroon Bells. And yes, when snowflakes are falling, the surrounding scenery becomes even more magical. “It’s like a ship in the sky,” Cunniffe describes of the dwelling, which frames the outdoor spectacle through a minimal material palette. “There’s nothing to interrupt the views. This home simply floats.”
The property’s irregular shape and very steep terrain, however, turned that concept into a technical challenge. But Cunniffe—who has lived just next door for 40 years and once owned the Meades’ land himself—understood the topography intimately. His strategy, developed closely alongside project architect Grant Bankston, was to build into the mountain rather than on top of it. “This residence is carved into the mountainside; it reads as if you’d cut a slot and notched a house inside,” Cunniffe explains. The result, with construction led by general contractor Ants Cullwick and project manager Charley Speer, is both dramatic and restrained.