S
Sam Frew
Guest
- Thread Author
- #1
Come off the mountain in the late afternoon, and the cat track delivers you to the edge of an outdoor room on the lower level of the house, roofed, walled, and able to be shut down when the weather turns. Step out of your skis, wander through, and the bespoke mudroom beyond is lined in blackened steel, with polished concrete underfoot. A short way along the same floor, the atmosphere changes completely, the walls and ceiling turning to cedar, chosen as much for how it smells when the steam comes up as for how it looks, bringing a warmth and familiarity that signals you are home.
Kirigami was completed in January 2024 at Powder Mountain in Eden, Utah, by Sparano + Mooney Architecture. The clients asked for a “very detail-oriented home” that would offer a place of sanctuary. They got exactly that, a physical hug dropped into the snowy landscape.
The site isn’t an easy one: 0.139 of an acre at 8,800 feet, sloped and completely exposed, with ski runs to the north and west. The flat roof is designed to carry 228 pounds per square foot of snow and resist 110-mile-per-hour winds. A pitch would have shed most of that weight and saved a great deal of structure, but a pitch has to drop its snow somewhere, and the two places this house cannot are the entry and the ski landing, so tradition was forgone and engineering prevails. The design passed the resort’s strict review without a single variance.
Kirigami takes its name from the Japanese art of paper cutting and folding, and the façade is where this idea is most prevalent. The skin is a custom panel system in TEKKō steel, a corrosion-resistant steel-zinc composite, formed into a standing seam that turns at each corner and continues over the upper level and through the courtyard, while the exterior reads as one folded surface. Panels alternate between solid and perforated, the cut sitting alongside the crease, varying in width and tone. Weathering steel is the more common choice on sites this harsh, and its evolving patina suits many buildings; here the concept asks for one crisp folded plane that will look immaculate for generations.
Where the panels open, thermally modified hem fir lines the reveals; the same boards continue through the wall to become the interior ceilings, all finished in the same clear coat. From the living room, the ceiling runs past the window head and out over the terrace with no change of plane or color, so the room reads as ending at the edge of the deck, rather than the face of the glass, making the 5,055-square-foot house feel far more generous than the floorplan might suggest. The detail asks a great deal of the envelope, because the air and thermal barriers have to run unbroken behind the timber; at this altitude, warm air reaching a cold cavity condenses inside the wall. It’s executed perfectly.
In winter, almost every space in the house can be shut away, and Kirigami is organized so intelligently that shutting one part away from another feels like cocooning, more so than isolation. The primary suite, sitting five feet above the main level, closes off entirely, providing a space for retreat. Equally, the scullery isolates any mess and noise from cooking so dinner arrives calmly, while the dedicated media room is windowless and acoustically sound as expected. A film at full volume never reaches the bedrooms. It’s all possible through imaginative design choices. Rather than benching a level pad, Sparano + Mooney chose to step the house down the hill to accommodate the slope, allowing the gradient of the site to do some of the work walls would otherwise do, and it works magnificently.
Come summer, the same house reverses. A Marvin Multi-Slide door pockets away and the living level opens fully onto its wedge-shaped terrace, angled west toward the sunset and the run. There is no mechanical cooling anywhere in the house— unusual at this level of the market. The default is usually ducted air conditioning sized to compensate for the expansive glazing, yet here the operable windows are chosen specifically to do that job alongside passive heating and cooling decisions that go as far as the structure’s orientation.
The correct glazing is of course vital to the success of a proposal like this, and Sparano + Mooney specified the Marvin Ultimate collection throughout, holding a minimum 0.32 U-factor inside an envelope insulated to R-70 at the roof and R-38 at the walls, with Casement and Awning windows placed to draw mountain air across the plan. Those two types seal as tightly as they ventilate precisely because a window asked to replace a cooling plant must not leak when shut.
The glazing is mostly concentrated in one area. The elevations facing the runs stay close to solid metal while the living volume turns its corner in floor-to-ceiling glass; sizes Ultimate is built to carry the structural performance and the loading demands. Direct Glaze units hold those fixed views, a Swinging French door serves the rooms that give onto weather, and an Ultimate Pivot door marks the main entry: six types, each matched to the job its opening requires. Inside, the frames are natural wood, vetted to the highest grade and matched in tone to the cozy hem fir overhead, so the glass wall reads seamlessly as part of the room’s joinery.
Ultimately, it is a house with two settings, sealed tight or thrown open, guided by the demands of the seasons, and it transitions with elegance and simplicity in a way that complements its often bleak surroundings, protecting its inhabitants in winter and celebrating the beauty of nature by immersing them in it in summer.
For architects balancing high-performance envelopes with expansive mountain views, explore the Ultimate collection at Marvin.com.
All images courtesy of Marvin ©
The post Folded Like Paper, Built for Mountains: How Kirigami Opens and Closes With the Seasons appeared first on Journal.
Kirigami was completed in January 2024 at Powder Mountain in Eden, Utah, by Sparano + Mooney Architecture. The clients asked for a “very detail-oriented home” that would offer a place of sanctuary. They got exactly that, a physical hug dropped into the snowy landscape.
The site isn’t an easy one: 0.139 of an acre at 8,800 feet, sloped and completely exposed, with ski runs to the north and west. The flat roof is designed to carry 228 pounds per square foot of snow and resist 110-mile-per-hour winds. A pitch would have shed most of that weight and saved a great deal of structure, but a pitch has to drop its snow somewhere, and the two places this house cannot are the entry and the ski landing, so tradition was forgone and engineering prevails. The design passed the resort’s strict review without a single variance.
The Folded Envelope
Kirigami takes its name from the Japanese art of paper cutting and folding, and the façade is where this idea is most prevalent. The skin is a custom panel system in TEKKō steel, a corrosion-resistant steel-zinc composite, formed into a standing seam that turns at each corner and continues over the upper level and through the courtyard, while the exterior reads as one folded surface. Panels alternate between solid and perforated, the cut sitting alongside the crease, varying in width and tone. Weathering steel is the more common choice on sites this harsh, and its evolving patina suits many buildings; here the concept asks for one crisp folded plane that will look immaculate for generations.
Where the panels open, thermally modified hem fir lines the reveals; the same boards continue through the wall to become the interior ceilings, all finished in the same clear coat. From the living room, the ceiling runs past the window head and out over the terrace with no change of plane or color, so the room reads as ending at the edge of the deck, rather than the face of the glass, making the 5,055-square-foot house feel far more generous than the floorplan might suggest. The detail asks a great deal of the envelope, because the air and thermal barriers have to run unbroken behind the timber; at this altitude, warm air reaching a cold cavity condenses inside the wall. It’s executed perfectly.
A Home for All Seasons
In winter, almost every space in the house can be shut away, and Kirigami is organized so intelligently that shutting one part away from another feels like cocooning, more so than isolation. The primary suite, sitting five feet above the main level, closes off entirely, providing a space for retreat. Equally, the scullery isolates any mess and noise from cooking so dinner arrives calmly, while the dedicated media room is windowless and acoustically sound as expected. A film at full volume never reaches the bedrooms. It’s all possible through imaginative design choices. Rather than benching a level pad, Sparano + Mooney chose to step the house down the hill to accommodate the slope, allowing the gradient of the site to do some of the work walls would otherwise do, and it works magnificently.
Come summer, the same house reverses. A Marvin Multi-Slide door pockets away and the living level opens fully onto its wedge-shaped terrace, angled west toward the sunset and the run. There is no mechanical cooling anywhere in the house— unusual at this level of the market. The default is usually ducted air conditioning sized to compensate for the expansive glazing, yet here the operable windows are chosen specifically to do that job alongside passive heating and cooling decisions that go as far as the structure’s orientation.
The Right Glass for the Task
The correct glazing is of course vital to the success of a proposal like this, and Sparano + Mooney specified the Marvin Ultimate collection throughout, holding a minimum 0.32 U-factor inside an envelope insulated to R-70 at the roof and R-38 at the walls, with Casement and Awning windows placed to draw mountain air across the plan. Those two types seal as tightly as they ventilate precisely because a window asked to replace a cooling plant must not leak when shut.
The glazing is mostly concentrated in one area. The elevations facing the runs stay close to solid metal while the living volume turns its corner in floor-to-ceiling glass; sizes Ultimate is built to carry the structural performance and the loading demands. Direct Glaze units hold those fixed views, a Swinging French door serves the rooms that give onto weather, and an Ultimate Pivot door marks the main entry: six types, each matched to the job its opening requires. Inside, the frames are natural wood, vetted to the highest grade and matched in tone to the cozy hem fir overhead, so the glass wall reads seamlessly as part of the room’s joinery.
Ultimately, it is a house with two settings, sealed tight or thrown open, guided by the demands of the seasons, and it transitions with elegance and simplicity in a way that complements its often bleak surroundings, protecting its inhabitants in winter and celebrating the beauty of nature by immersing them in it in summer.
For architects balancing high-performance envelopes with expansive mountain views, explore the Ultimate collection at Marvin.com.
All images courtesy of Marvin ©
The post Folded Like Paper, Built for Mountains: How Kirigami Opens and Closes With the Seasons appeared first on Journal.