Inside A Modernist Montana Home Where Après-Ski Coziness Thrives

Details

A hallway is lined with...

In a Big Sky residence outfitted by designer Thom Filicia, a passage framed by patinated-steel panels and dry-stacked sandstone quarried high in the mountains of northwest Montana leads to an office and two guest rooms. A roughly chiseled Mexican onyx bench provides a place to pause underneath a photograph by Ali Darvish. The custom, brushed-nickel picture light is by Modulightor.

A family room has a...

The centerpiece of the family room is a custom sectional by Filicia, upholstered in Schumacher’s Babe’s Tweed; the four-sided design keeps everyone connected. Just beyond is a vintage half-moon chair from Sedgwick & Brattle and DDC’s Cristallino foosball table in tempered clear crystal

A sculptural light fixture in...

In the main stairwell, the ceiling and left wall are clad in white oak, while the opposite wall displays patinated steel panels. A blackened-brass chandelier with glass shades by Poliform makes a statement without distracting from the view of Lone Peak.

Family room with card table

The family room’s bar area features custom cabinetry made by local craftsman Tom Hennessy and stained to match Phillip Jeffries’ felted-and woven-wool Savile Suiting wallcovering in Gentlemens Grey. Henge’sMassimo Castagna–designed Shift table and Strip chairs rest atop a vintage handwoven Moroccan rug from Feizy. Two large photographs by Ali Darvish nod to the home’s wild neighbors.

An open plan kitchen and...

Custom light fixtures hang above a Filicia-designed dining table. The Cahn armchairs are by Douglas Levine for Bright. Powell & Bonnell’s Contralto counter stools from Dennis Miller New York pull up to the kitchen’s Brazilian quartzite countertop.

Art by Andrea Büttner.

In the guest room, art by Andrea Büttner hangs against walls covered in Phillip Jeffries’ Suede Lounge. Apparatus pendants illuminate a channel- tufted headboard upholstered in a Templeton textile. The armchair is by Verellen.

Bathroom with marble tile.

The powder room’s statuary marble sink is set against walls wrapped in Artistic Tile’s textured Bianco Carrara marble tile. The metallic finishes of Fantini’s Venezia sink hardware and an oversized bronze pendant mirror from Sedgwick & Brattle add to the glamour.

Patio with view of mountains

Lone Peak’s snowy slopes are the perfect backdrop for the terrace’s custom, blackened-steel built-in fire pit, around which Filicia arranged teak daybeds and woven Sag Harbor lounge chairs by Sutherland. Natural teak side tables by Azzurro Living reference the trunks of nearby trees. The hand-textured white concrete cocktail table is by Janus et Cie.

For designer Thom Filicia, the perfect Montana winter day is simple. “After skiing on Yellowstone Club’s slopes, you return to your house where there’s a fire going, food cooking, and family and friends in every room,” Filicia relates. “Everyone relaxes in comfortable après-ski clothes, glasses of wine in hand, but they’re ready to have fun because it’s just 4 o’clock.”

This is the scene the noted designer brought to life in a ski-in, ski-out vacation home overlooking Big Sky’s iconic Lone Peak. His goal was to create the ideal backdrop, one he describes as an “environment to gather in and feel pampered.”

When Filicia joined the project, his client—an active family who splits their time between the East Coast and Big Sky—had already selected a Yellowstone Club homesite and tasked local architect Nate Heller with creating a contemporary residence celebrating the mountain views while evoking the look and feel of a luxurious boutique hotel. Heller and project manager Josey Hasson responded with a design that, from the street, appears to be a single-story home. But when viewed from the ski slopes, its multistory, glass-walled rear façade “looks like a big lantern on the side of the hill,” the architect says. The dwelling offers views at every turn, from the main floor’s open-concept living, dining and cooking space—which, when the sliding glass doors retract, becomes one with a broad terrace and landscape designed by Troy Scherer—to the main bedroom suite, where a cantilevered bathing area hovers above the hillside.

Heller crafted a fresh take on the traditional Western palette of weathered woods, rusted metals and chiseled stones, opting to carry clean-lined wood, native sandstone and patinated steel from exterior to interior for a seamless modernist style. Before selecting a single piece of furniture, Filicia’s first objective was to fine-tune the fit and finish of these materials so the interiors would feel warm, textured and inviting. To that end, he and the architect created a wall and ceiling treatment in the open living room and kitchen comprising thin ribs of white oak—each individually placed under the direction of general contractor Chris Lohss—which adds dimension and softens echoes in the glass-walled rooms. Other vertical surfaces—from kitchen cabinet faces to the living room’s fireplace surround—are defined by steel panels artificially aged to achieve a dark- bronze finish. The imperfect patina “is similar to what you would see in the region’s old mining buildings,” Filicia says. “The clients were excited to create something more modern than they’ve ever done before, but it also had to respond to this location. They trusted us to use familiar materials in unconventional ways so that we could achieve a sense of warmth, strength and ruggedness while still feeling modern.”

That juxtaposition is enhanced by accents of clean-faced, dry-stacked sandstone, “which really tells the story of where we are,” Filicia notes. The regional material’s range of warm and cool tones inspired the designer to employ fabrics and finishes in a complementary palette of earthy neutrals. There’s color too—rich cabernet and truffle shades on accent pillows, slate-green hues on a sculptural chair—but the kind of après-ski comfort Filicia envisioned demanded that texture be the star. So, the designer wrapped dining chairs in velvet and heavy bouclé, upholstered headboards in suede, and draped the family room’s four-sided custom sectional—which faces a fireplace, bar, crystal foosball table and mountain- view terrace—in cozy faux furs.

All that softness balances glamorous accents of polished stone and metal: rope-like channels of Carrara marble on the powder room’s walls, book-matched onyx slabs around the family room fireplace, sexy bronze coffee tables in the living room and, above them, custom light fixtures in bronze and brass. “They look like birds flying through the living room, dining room and kitchen,” Filicia says of the latter, which hang at varying heights. “They bring the ceiling down and make the entire space feel more human-scale and approachable.”

Which means that as evenings draw near and Lone Peak’s familiar face becomes a silhouette, the après-adventure scene unfolds just as Filicia imagined. “You’re watching the sunset on the mountain, you’re seeing the color and light change, and all of a sudden the stars come out,” the designer says. “What I love about this house is that when you’re in it, you’re coddled, but you’re still part of that outdoor experience.”