03 Apr FROM THE EDITOR: COMING HOME

Designing and building a home, on its surface, is a fundamental procedure. One must compose a structure that provides for primary needs — shelter and warmth — while offering spaces to store necessities, prepare food, and sleep. Yet, in meeting these universal needs, homeowners, designers, and builders often test the boundaries of imagination — arranging spaces, applying materials, and outfitting a house in innovative ways that bring depth to the experience a home offers. An overarching structure emotes safety through color, texture, and siting; a kitchen inspires everyday communion through practical elements and accessible flow; a bedroom soothes the senses with softness.

Truly bespoke homes lend themselves to creativity as homeowners work closely with their design-build teams. While complex, the process is distinctly gratifying for those motivated by exacting functionality and elevated artistry.

This annual HOME edition showcases the satisfaction of a job not only well done, but exceedingly so, with projects designed for the array of life experiences that make up mountain living. Whether crafted for diversion, steeped in sustainable principles, inspired by natural surroundings, or built in homage to the construction legacy of the past, the homes in this issue come to life through the passion and precision of their makers.

Joy of the craft is self-evident. Visionary architects, builders, and interior designers collectively aspire to redefine the structural, to create a welcoming retreat — a uniquely informed emotional and physical respite — from four mere walls and a roof. And teams of artists, craftsmen, and artisans leave their fingerprints on the final forms, endeavoring to explore the full realm of their varied mediums, ever expanding on what came before, propelling toward something new. The result is a marriage of the utilitarian and the aesthetic, good bones and inspired beauty. The result is home.