Junegrass House

• Prize
  Interior Designer of the Year
• Company/Firm
  Messana O'Rorke
• Designer
  Brian Messana & Toby O'Rorke
• Photo Credit
  Tuck Fauntleroy
• Location
  Jackson, Wyoming
• Project Date
  June 2021
• Client
  NA
• Project Link
  view
• Web URL
  view

How does one marshal the most traditional buildings materials and architectural details—stone, wood, pitched roofs—into a house that functions and feels distinctly modern? Working within the manifold constraints of community design guidelines, we designed a house that feels at one with its rugged mountain setting and respects the traditional character of the neighboring residences, all without compromising our fastidious approach to space planning and form-making. Inspired by the humble vernacular residences of nearby Mormon Row—a late-frontier Wyoming settlement built by members of the Church of Latter Day Saints—our design straddles the nineteenth to twenty-first centuries, resolving the potentially contradictory demands of contextual sensitivity and contemporary brio.
To lighten the visual impact of the 5,000-square-foot residence, we broke the structure down into four volumes connected by see-through glass bridges that buoy the impression of independent pavilions arrayed in a line. The house is variously clad in stained cedar and stone, again accentuating the individual identities of the pavilions.