About the project
Perched 8,100 feet high on the side of a mountain in Montana’s Madison Range, the Yellowstone Residence features stunning architectural design using materials derived from the powerful surrounding landscape. Designed by Stuart Silk Architects, the exterior of the house is a composition of Core-ten steel and board-formed concrete, materials which metaphorically and directly embrace the harsh realities of the site and its immediate environment.
The 6,100-square-foot residence is organised by two massive, eighteen-inch-thick, perpendicular concrete walls that cleave the house and extend into the landscape to the north and south. “The first wall runs north/south and leads one into the house and directs views at Pioneer Peak,” says Stuart Silk, primary architect. “The second is faceted in four directions towards a tall, narrow window providing peak-a-boo views from the living room in the otherwise windowless wall.” Past a large, steel, pivot door. the wall continues through the house, past the living room where it directs the view across a timbered valley toward the 9,800 foot summit of Pioneer Mountain.
A second four-foot-thick concrete wall runs perpendicularly to the first wall and features faceted planes that angle towards a tall, narrow window into the stairway and living room. Entry is at the upper floor of this two-story home. The principal spaces include a fifteen-foot-tall living room, which is flanked by two eleven-foot-tall volumes containing the kitchen/dining room to the west and the master bedroom suite to the east. The lower floor holds the entertainment room, three guest suites and a bunk room. To maintain privacy, the home is nearly opaque on the entry side except for a narrow slot of glass and a two-sided projecting corner window that provides views to the north and east from the master bathroom.
Montana landscape colours were brought into the interiors using natural stone throughout and adding refined furniture, luxurious fabrics, and silk area rugs. The addition of custom art glass lighting and feature windows created the final sparkle. At each level, a cedar, slatted ceiling is supported above the monolithic concrete floor. Structural steel columns are left exposed in the living room. Blackened-steel panels delineate apertures in the thick walls. Floor-to-ceiling glass walls allow unobstructed views of the dramatic alpine landscape and sky, while a continuous band of clerestory windows in the living room allows balanced light to penetrate the home from four sides. Two sculptural-steel elements—the oversized twelve-foot-tall pivot door at the entrance, and a twenty-foot-long stair railing are punctuated with arrays of square, glass-filled holes, reminiscent of stars in the night sky.