Yellowstone Club Residence

About Yellowstone Residence

Perched at 8,100’ on a mountainside in Montana’s Madison Range, the massing and materials of the Yellowstone Residence are derived from the powerful landscape. The exterior of the house is a composition of core-ten steel and board-formed concrete – materials which metaphorically embrace the harshness of the site and its immediate environment.  The building is organized by a massive concrete wall which cleaves the house and extends into the landscape to the north and south.  Approached alongside the wall, the entrance is carved between the wall and a faceted perpendicular concrete volume which recalls the boulders strewn about the site.  The wall extends thru the living room, where it directs the view across a timbered valley, directly toward the 9,800’ summit of Pioneer Mountain and the sky itself. The core-ten was selected to merge the home with the rocky soil becoming an outgrowth of its site.

One enters the upper floor of this two-story home. The principal spaces are the 15-foot tall living room flanked by the 11-foot tall volumes containing the kitchen/dining room to the west and by the master bedroom suite to the east. The lower floor contains the entertainment room, three guest suites, and a bunk room. To maintain privacy the home is nearly opaque on the entry side of the building except for a tall narrow slot of glass in the faceted concrete and a two-sided projecting corner window that provides views to the north and east from the master bathroom.  The two ceiling heights modulates the composition and is a subliminal reminder of the hierarchical structure of the surrounding mountains.

The interior materials palette is similarly elemental.  At each level, a cedar slatted ceiling is supported above the monolithic concrete floor by blackened steel columns.  Blackened steel also delineates apertures in the thick walls.  Floor-to-ceiling glass curtain 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 – an oversized pivot door at the entrance, and a ¾’ thick twenty-foot long stair railing – are decorated with arrays of square glass holes, abstractly reminiscent of stars in the night sky. The railing is supported by rectilinear steel dowels embedded into the concrete stair.