STATE OF THE ART

A museum-quality Sun Valley hideaway gets a warm interior treatment from Lucas Design Associates.

By KATHRYN O’SHEA-EVANS Photographs by AARON LEITZ

Lucas Design Associates made its clients’ art collection—and cinematic views of Ketchum, Idaho—the star of this home by architect Tom Kundig. The piece above the fireplace, by Barbara Vaughn, was commissioned by gallerist and homeowner Andria Friesen.

FROM TOP: Kundig’s architecture echoes the towering silhouettes of adjacent aspen trees. A mosaic tree stump by artist Jason Middlebrook nods to the forests beyond in the master bedroom.

n certain locales, modernism can read as decidedly meh. What would Paris be if its Neoclassical façades were replaced with Mies van der Rohe streamlining? Or Venice, were its stilts topped not with Gothic paeans to extravagance but with angular steel and glass? Trips to such destinations would elicit far fewer jealous sighs, to be sure. But in the wilds of Sun Valley, Idaho, where moose and bear frolic over mountain and prairie, clean-lined modern architecture is the perfect foil for the untamed natural world beyond the windows.

Take the Stirrup House, designed by architect Tom Kundig as a second home for art-obsessed Seattle couple Andria Friesen and Robert DeGennaro. By the time sibling-owned Lucas Design Associates (LDA) entered the scene to tackle the interiors, “the house envelope had been masterfully designed by Tom and his office, and they were swiftly approaching the [point where they’d need] to understand how the interior spaces would come together,” says Suzie Lucas, the firm’s cofounder and lead interior designer. The 6,472-square-foot home is, according to Suzie, bold and big, and her clients wanted the finishes to be equally strong. At the same time, the clients wanted these details to work for their everyday lives. “Literally, they asked for surfaces that would hold up to cat mischief, [like] cerused oak floors that wouldn’t show [cat] fur but were also elegant and refined,” she says. Equally important, they wanted a “a clean, crisp background for their art collection.”

Friesen, who moved to Ketchum in 1986 to open Friesen Gallery, has an impressive hoard. One piece, Verus (2013), by Nicole Chesney, is composed of more than 200 microscopic layers of paint on acid-etched mirrored glass. (“The Smithsonian American Art Museum, late last year, acquired one of the largest paintings of her career for their permanent collection,” Friesen says.) Another, Self Portrait with Several Tiny Homes (2009), by Julie Heffernan, hangs like Botticelli’s Birth of Venus over the master bed. Against snowy walls—all painted in Benjamin Moore’s China White in flat finish, which Friesen also

Iuses in her gallery—the pieces all but reverberate. “This project is truly an art house,” says Kundig, design principal of Olson Kundig. “Art is very much a part of the family’s lifestyle, so the home was designed to work at different scales depending on their constantly rotating collection of artworks.” The design also maximizes Ketchum’s natural wonders: beyond the windows stand Bald Mountain and 6,638-foot-tall Dollar Mountain (which could well be called MillionDollar-View Mountain). The interior design took a somewhat different tack. “We were honored to have Kundig as the architect, but we didn’t want that voice, if you will, for our interior design,” Friesen says. “We wanted something that was fresh, unique, and us.” That meant creating a bit of a cushy buffer inside the sleek home. “We’re not fans of really uncomfortable, modern, stark-looking furniture,” DeGennaro says. “At the same time, we didn’t want it to be cluttered.” The interiors they sought would allow “the art in the house to be the color,” as DeGennaro puts it. LDA was happy to comply; design is in their blood. The trio of siblings grew up in a creative New York family, and each attended art school in Manhattan—Suzie at the School of Visual Arts, David and Rachel at Parsons School of Design— before moving to Seattle and kickstarting their own firm. “Function versus form was something we learned at a young age, with our engineer father being the king of tinkering and our chef-caterer mother experimenting with how to perfectly cook in a tagine or weave a bread basket so she could make bespoke Easter decorations,” Suzie says. Now, in their own work, “function and comfort are very important to us, which are things that people sometimes think they need to forfeit for style.” A prime example in Stirrup House: they secreted away the most unsightly aspect of modern life— the televisions—by hiding one behind a painting on a lift above the living room fireplace, and concealing another that rises from below a steel plate in the master bedroom floor. The designers often focus on custom pieces, especially in a modernist project like the Stirrup House, because “there’s »

not an abundance of stuff,” Suzie says. “When things are pared down like this, you have to be careful with selections because there’s no room for error.” The only larger things they shopped for were task chairs and exterior seating (smaller items include fabrics and side tables); everything else, including the bedding, they commissioned. One such treasure is the wool rug in the living room, whose bronze silk details change with the light off the surrounding foothills. “If you lifted your gaze up and out the windows, you would see that the pattern on the rug [below you] is the landscape of the hill you’re looking at,” Friesen says. “It is so subtle and understated, and it is quintessential LDA.”

The coffee table is kiln-formed glass. “It weighs so much, it’s ridiculous trying to move that thing,” DeGennaro says. “You need six guys to pick it up!” Friesen envisioned super-modern candelabras for her dining table. “Then I found out they don’t exist. They’re either Liberace-style or they’re not,” she says. “What do you do? You call LDA.” The firm designed a custom version of her vision. “The end result was the coolest candelabras you’ve ever seen in your life,” Friesen continues. “People say, ‘Oh, how could I get some? We have to have these.’ They are magnificent.”

In the end, LDA’s interior design has proved to be as enchanting as the view beyond the floor-to-ceiling glass walls. “We have so many people come here, and when you approach the home, it’s a statement and a sculpture,” Friesen says. “Then they walk in, and they’re not even here five or 10 minutes before they say, ‘I wasn’t prepared for the embrace.’” h

THIS PAGE: A Le Corbusier chaise provides a contemplative reading perch in the home’s de facto library. OPPOSITE: The custom pouredglass and forged-metal coffee table, designed by LDA and made by a local blacksmith, is its own work of art.