Michael Johnson’s answer to having little buildable land to work with in his design of Ruth Hiller’s Winter Park, Colorado, house was to elevate and cantilever the kitchen, living, and dining space over the carport, nearly...
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Michael Johnson’s answer to having little buildable land to work with in his design of Ruth Hiller’s Winter Park, Colorado, house was to elevate and cantilever the kitchen, living, and dining space over the carport, nearly doubling the home’s living area. Many of us have waxed poetic about climbing out of our cubicles and eschewing the soul-crushing density of urban centers to live the freewheeling life of a ski bum, but few of us actually do it. Then again, recovering New Yorker Ruth Hiller isn’t exactly like most people: After visiting Winter Park, Colorado, for weekend ski jaunts, the 44-year-old artist and corrective-exercise specialist fell in love with the small mountain town—and decided to move there. “I was living in New York, working as a graphic designer, and one day I just decided that I wanted to ski,” Hiller says, casually. While lacking the celebrity cachet of nearby Vail or Aspen, Winter Park has proximity to Denver, a higher volume of snowfall, and a small-town sense of community that Hiller cherishes. “I like the local feel. It’s not overdeveloped,” she explains. Once she decided to relocate permanently, Hiller needed a mountain home to match her predilection for all things modern. “I found this 1,200-square-foot ranch house, built in 1962. It was,” she pauses to ponder her word choice, “dumpy. But I thought, Oh, I can just remodel the inside. Then I found an architect I liked and thought, Why not just redo the whole thing?” To start over, she sought out Arizona-based designer Michael P. Johnson. “I knew I wanted glass and steel with wraparound windows,” she says. “He came out, saw the property, and did a sketch. We decided on the design in five minutes.”
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