Modern Luxury Aspen Magazine: Insider's Guide 2020-2021

Exceptional Home Design Has Come to Define This Mountain Town—We Chat with Two Designers Who've Been Part of Creating Architectural Beauty Among the Hills.

Written by Michael McCarthy
Photographed by Draper White Photography

A gorgeous Aspen home design from Ro | Rockett Design, whose principal, Zac Rockett, says they love working with natural materials and voluminous spaces.

When a town’s roughly 7,000 residents include some of the planet’s most important cultural innovators, the places where they live will inevitably reflect an unmatched aesthetic. Visitors driving through town and into the nearby mountains will quickly notice architecture that is at once stunning and perfectly attuned to the land, especially with the marriage of modern design and natural elements.

“We have project locations in beautiful places across the country, but will say that one of our favorite locations to work is Aspen,” says Zac Rockett, principal at Ro | Rockett Design (rorockettdesign.com), a Los Angeles- and San Francisco-based firm that boasts standout designs in Aspen. “It’s a place of such natural drama, and we work hard to try and capture that in the spirit of each project. In fact, we find the Roaring Fork Valley a very humbling spot—these houses become both a refuge from the elements and a bridge to such a beautiful landscape.” 

Rockett says his team’s background and interests are strongly rooted in modernism. “We try to let the aesthetic develop specific to the unique interests and conditions of each project,” he says. “We love working with natural materials and voluminous spaces—we then work to animate these with an abundance of natural light and strong connections to the outdoors.”

Aspen-based Zone 4 Architects (zone4architects.com) has a reputation for contemporary design, but the firm’s principal, Dylan Johns, says Aspen itself provides creative fodder—with “an amazing range of inspiration from the natural and built environment.”

Johns says his typical client is sophisticated, well-traveled and expects the best. “Aspen is a place where they can let their guard down and recharge, so [we] spend a lot of time getting to know [clients] to deliver the best possible design for their aesthetics, lifestyle and property, while also looking out for their budget, keeping the process efficient and bringing as much value to the design and construction as possible.”

Rockett says his firm’s approach is also quite iterative. “We turn over a lot of stones in an effort to identify the most successful design solution. We love it when clients roll up their sleeves and get into the middle of that process with us, contemplating the differences of each proposal,” he says. Rockett notes he and his business partner, Jason Ro, were trained as designers in environments where many ideas were rejected before they were approved. “We bring our clients into that conversation and feel that some of the most successful projects have buy-in along the way by all parties,” says Rockett. “We try our best to spend as much time as we can listening to our clients’ interests and desires, and then we spend even more time working to translate these fairly abstract ideas into built reality. The granular details that we can tease out and pick up along the way often end up being the most critical ingredients in the final soup.”

And what a tantalizing and gorgeous soup it is. Drink up Aspen’s architecture—it’s some of the most aesthetically nourishing you’ll encounter anywhere.