Comfortable for two, but poised for welcoming company, behind its private façade this new Promontory home balances the demands.
Rather than a home that boldly announces its presence, the rooflines of this home peek above the vegetation. It makes it a perfect private retreat. Located in Promontory, a gated multi-season resort community by Park City, the full-service Jaffa Group designed the home (Scott Jaffa, architect), built it, and executed the interior design. The opening shot is the streetside.
From this angle, you can see how the house nestles in on the streetside and can appreciate the steepness of the building site, affording it more than 180-degree views toward the Wasatch Mountains from the back.
It’s time to come inside. The entry has a large steel-paned and cased window looking out to the street, and a side walkway leads to a lustrous wooden pivot door with brass inlays and a vertical glass pane. The color theme is set in the entry with black and white geometric wallpaper, black accents in the console table and sculpture base, white walls, and warmth from the natural wood of the flooring and the warm metal tones in the chandelier, appropriate for tying it to its mountain setting.
This straight-on view of the open living area allows you to appreciate how the space relates to the front entry (on left). In the foreground is a square coffee table and angular sectional sofa that I will discuss and show more of later. Beyond to the left is a glass stairway that leads up to a reading nook and office and down to more living space. To the right you can see the dining area and chandelier and the kitchen beyond.
Looking to the right of the entry is a corner of the sofa and the bar. The hallway leads to a powder room and the primary suite.
Ceiling angles and blackened steel beams help to define the areas in the open plan. A unique double-sided sofa offers generous seating both looking toward the fireplace and television and out into the room. It successfully offers seating that is sufficiently intimate and scaled for two to enjoy a quiet evening or for entertaining a large group with room for separate conversations.
As I photograph more Park City homes, I recognize this as a consistent design challenge. By the nature of these homes, they are intended to draw together extended family and friends for celebrations, Park City events, and all-season recreation. At the same time, frequently the couple just wants to enjoy their home as a quiet getaway and to recreate outdoors without company to entertain. Consequently, the home should also be scaled and furnished for just them. The two design goals must work together, and I’m sure it is not easy.
The sectional sofa and seating area deserve a second and closer look. I’ll first call out the windows; they slide and fully open to the patio outside. Next, blackened girders provide the hearth and mantel of the fireplace. Beside the fireplace is a television that pivots out into the room for viewing or recedes back to be nearly invisible—certainly not the focal point that many televisions become in the room. Above is sharply honed blond stone that provides warm tones for mountain living. To me, the stone almost felt like a Scandinavian wood design.
And the sectional! I believe it could comfortably seat 15 or 16! With its 90-degree turns and back-to-back design, it serpentines through the room without a sense of being too much.
From the dining area and looking into the living area, you can appreciate the architectural elements highlighted in black: the angled ceiling, the glass stairway, and the casing on the series of windows. This photograph shows the attention given to maintaining strong, low, horizontal lines in the furnishings that correspond to the architecture while allowing for line-of-sight through the open plan.
The kitchen continues the black and white theme in the stools, range hood, and elegant white stone, but the wooden cabinets, their sleek design accentuated by lack of hardware, offer warmth to the space. The kitchen is open to being easily viewed from the rest of the home. Anticipating a need to hide work clutter, the long walk-in pantry (accessed in the corner behind the flowers) has storage on one side and counters with work surfaces and appliances on the opposite side.
I haven’t emphasized how well the home articulates with outdoor living, allowing the party to move outside or doubling the entertainment space. The doors to the dining area also roll back to open to the patio. In the foreground is the dining area and grill, and beyond are two sofas facing each other on opposite sides or the fire pit.
Fall was in the air when I made these photos. The wildfire smoke we have sadly become accustomed to hits in September, as do temperamental unpredicted thunderstorms, but the color and crisp cool air more than make up for it. Enjoy the change!