Aspen Elevation
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When architect Marc Appleton and his associate, Paul Williger, begin to design a house, they hope their clients do not have a particular style in mind. "We will agree to a style," says Santa Monica, California-based Appleton, "if it's strongly called for by the context—a place like Santa Barbara, for example, where there's a salient architectural language at work—but we prefer to collaborate closely with clients to create a house that's a portrait of them rather than a historically correct reproduction of a period style."
Built with local architect David F. Gibson and decorated by Los Angeles-based designers Bill Lane and K. C.
McCook, a log-and-barn-siding residence in Aspen, Colorado, for Bob Gersh—a partner in a family-owned talent agency in Beverly Hills—his wife, Linda, and their three children is just such an achievement. "I didn't want to work with a signature architect because I wanted a house with our signature," says Linda Gersh.
For many years, in summer and in winter, the couple had vacationed in Aspen in a small house that no longer suited their growing family. One day Linda Gersh found a remarkable two-and-a-half-acre lot for sale, and as it was one of the last sizable secluded properties available in Aspen, the couple lost no time in acquiring it.
Surrounded by views of the mountains, concealed from the road by cottonwoods, evergreens and aspens, the site looks onto a broad meadow bounded by the Roaring Fork River. Because only one nearby house is visible, the land—though it is within an easy walk of downtown Aspen—has the look and feel of a remote mountain ranch. For Appleton, it was the sound of the river that made the place seem truly rural. "It masked the noise from neighbors and cars on the road above," he recalls, "and suggested that we might envision the house as romantically rustic."
Appleton and Williger, as is their custom, began by looking at other houses with the clients. "We looked at the architecture in the area," says Appleton. "We would see bits and pieces we liked—a use of stone, a window treatment, a type of roof. But there was nothing as a whole that inspired the Gershes or us."
Bob and Linda Gersh knew what they didn't like imitation Victorians and heavy log houses too big for their lots. "We were turned off by logs in the beginning," she explains, "because we didn't want what usually goes with them—the great high-ceilinged room, massive stone fireplace, huge picture windows and elk-antler chandeliers." The couple began to show the architects photographs of New England houses, including a shingled farmhouse with gables that became the starting point of the design.
During the schematic stage, they brought forth another compelling image—one of a residence with barn siding. "We started to realize that the Shingle Style houses we loved were all in New England and didn't really fit in here," Bob Gersh says. The architets abandoned the shingle skin for board and batten. Just prior to construction, however, the clients once again changed their minds. They decided to build it all out of logs, but not just any logs. "We didn't want the big, blond, contemporary-looking brand-new logs that most people in Aspen use," Linda Gersh says.
Appleton and Williger fought hard against the use of logs throughout. "We persuaded our clients that the logs and the board and batten should be combined," says Appleton. It is in the tradition of log construction—for anything bigger than a cabin, particularly when the roof is complicated—that some form of siding be used in the space between the logs and the roof.
The architects devised a structure framed by century-old, hand-hewn timbers, with logs enclosing the first floor and stair hall, and antique board-and-batten siding used for the upper floor. The roof has heavy cedar shakes, and the foundation and one of the chimneys are of a local lichen stone in subtle shades of ocher. "A nice mix of rustic materials," says Appleton, "that were weathered to begin with and will weather even more with time." The barn siding and timbers were shipped from a firm in Pennsylvania that salvages the remains of old farm buildings. "We're fond of the idea that we're taking something from another building and reusing it," says Appleton. The logs were cut from dead trees that had remained standing. "We had a range for the diameters of the pieces," Williger notes. "We drew the details for all the overlapping, staggered corners so they would fit tightly."
They paid as much attention to the fenestration as they did to the logs and siding. Many of today's period-style houses have multipaned windows that are stylistically inauthentic because the panes vary in size and proportion from one window to another. In historic buildings pane sizes tended to be uniform due to the limitations of early glassmaking. Appleton and Williger decided that one of the best ways to make the house look old, as the clients wished, was to design the windows so that whatever their overall dimension and shape, the panes would have the same size and proportions.
The house spreads across the generous site, with the rear façade looking south-east, toward the meadow and the river. "The first thing I said to Marc," Linda Gersh remembers, "was that I wanted to walk through the front door and see the meadow and river." A hall extends across the width of the house to a pair of doors that open onto the riverfront porch. To the west, the dining room and the family room open to the same view. To the east are the living room and the husband's study, with a diagonal bay that offers a vista of Aspen Mountain. On the second floor, all the bedrooms have river views, and the master bedroom shares the bay of the study below.
The interiors are not quite as rustic as the exteriors, though the log siding in the two-story stair hall is an exception. "We weren't sure we wanted to display the logs there, " says Appleton. "Linda convinced us, and she turned out to be right." Dark-stained wide planks are used for much of the flooring. Ceilings of plaster, wood or beaded board are transversed by antique beams. Painted beaded boards line the kitchen and the family room and appear as wainscoting in the dining room; most walls are finished with integrally colored plaster.
The collaborative nature of the project was evident throughout the design and construction phases. "With Bob and Linda, we were prepared for the unexpected," says Marc Appleton. "If the house succeeds, it is because we made it to absorb all the shifts and changes and still hang together."