Owners Jean and George Shirk decided to keep the site alive, however, just for the heck of it.
The Shirks still have a thing about Mammoth, and may return there soon to stir up more trouble.
In the meantime, enjoy the high country (who doesn't?) and stay safe and well.
]]>It's one thing to live among Old Mammoth's trees, but quite another to live in one.
That is the idea behind one of the town's more innovative homes, designed and built by longtime Mammoth architect Elliott Brainard.
"What this is," he said, gazing toward the exterior of the home, "is a metaphor for a pine tree. It's an organic shape; you look at it through the trees and the bottom is round. As you look at the exterior, you're looking through branches."
"This is organic, is what this is."
Once inside the house, the light changes with each step upwards. Downstairs, in the trunk, as it were, the home is dark, sheltered and cozy. As one ascends the stairs, the home opens to the light gradually until, on the main platform, grand vistas of Mammoth Mountain and the Sherwins come into view.
Everything is a natural color, so much so that sometimes it's hard to tell if you're on the inside looking out or the other way around.
It is impressive by any standard, made more so by the fact that it is Mammoth, which is situated in a difficult seismic zone (zone 4) and a heavy snowload zone.
The engineering on the house was by Bill Jenkins, who had to wrestle with the round base and the overhanging platform.
"He said it was the most complicated building he'd done in over twenty years," Brainard said.
"We have this weird combination of Seismic Zone 4 and snow. That doesn't happen anywhere else in the world. It's unique.
"Even in Tahoe, you might have heavier snow ground weights, but they're not in a Seismic Zone 3. We're the only ones I'm aware of building in Seismic Zone 4.
Zone 4 locations are located nearest to active earthquake faults and pose greater hazards than Zone 3, according to the state Seismic Safety Commission.
Aside of from this particular home, Brainard was the principal architect for Stonegate, the project along Minaret Road.
Here, too, he said he brings an organic sense into the buildings.
"The idea of Stonegate came from when I was living at Snowcreek Phase V. I used to wonder how I would do it, if I could start over.
"In the unit I was in, it was on the back of the project but it wasn't on the open space side, so I had to look across a lot in front of me to see a view. Really, you wouldn't want to look across the road and look across another building.
Stonegate happened because we wanted a project that was more of a niche design; not an Intrawest design, with more privacy, with separated buildings instead of common wall. It's a good example of the higher-end condo world than anything that's happened here before."
Even with Stonegate, though, Brainard's crowning achievement, so to speak, is in his single-family tree house.
"You get used to what you do; I'm not looking for shock value or anything like that. It's just an expression in a lot of ways. This is more vision-oriented.
"You don't always get to do something really different, so this is what this is. It's definitely what this is about."
]]>This isn't just any cabin, not in any traditional sense anyway.
It is cozy, no doubt about that.
It does not tower over the tree canopy, and its color palette is that of the landscape.
But from that point on, Malibu architect Edward Niles, 71, and his architect daughter, Lisa, left the grid.
"It's hard to call it a cabin, I know," he said during a late afternoon conversation.
From where he sat, he gained a three-hundred and sixty degree view of the Mammoth outdoors.
In the distance, on one side, were the Sherwins. Branches from trees were just outside the windows. The hard, dusty slope and its tough groundcover rose from the back panels of glass.
It was as if we were outdoors, except that we were in fact indoors, in the living room of one of the most talked-about homes in Mammoth.
What to make of it?
"The days of stick construction, of cutting down trees and building walls out of studs and doing all the wood siding, is in many respects a violation of every reason you're here to begin with," he said, "which is to leave the forest alone. That may seem a little off the wall, but I believe that's very much true. There's no house that I have done for over thirty years that is really built of wood. Everything has been built of steel, of concrete, of materials that do not encroach on what I consider to be an environmental issue.
"I started well before Al Gore."
Niles, a well-known and respected architect who lives near his pal Frank Gehry and built the home that Johnny Carson inhabited, speaks in pleasant, measured sentences with a professorial tone. A conversation with Niles is part history lecture, part FutureSpeak and very much on topic of how to consider modern architecture and its relation to nature.
"My design sense comes from an attitude about nature and the very simplistic argument about how things are put together," he said. "I call that nature. My own background is wanting to be an architect in the truest sense of the word: creating and building objects and forms. That's always intrigued me ever since I can remember.
"I’m not particularly interested in resurrecting the past; I’m interested in taking the ideas of the past and moving forward with those ideas. Combine that with a certain sensitivity to nature and a strong engineering background, it's like building a somewhat of a composition. It's not a layered idea, it's more of a mixture.
"I'm really very uncomfortable with resurrecting or reinterpreting images of the past. It's primarily because I just don't see that way.
"For example, when somebody says ‘snow’ to me, I think of it as a beautiful thing. It's like an incredible blanket. It's an object. It doesn’t suggest to me pitched roofs, or that it’s going to fall on the car and destroy it.
"I came to Mammoth in particular and the first thing I tried to do was to acquire a piece of property where I'd be free of the traditional imagery of the past and find what seems to be correct as far as I interface with nature and the weather, snow, all of these things.
"One reason for this house was to develop something vertically so that we'd capture the longer view of Mammoth and were not submerged within trees. Another reason was to take advantage of the tremendous sun and the high, dry desert climate versus being up, for example, in Tahoe, or in Vail. It's totally different environment and totally different resolution."
Because of its steel and glass construction, along with a flat roof that allows snow to act as insulation, the Niles home uses very little fuel for heat. It faces south and east so that the sun heats the home in the morning, particularly in the winter. The interior of the cube is standard oak paneling. Everything in it is simple. Everything makes sense.
Its interior design is minimalist, to say the least. It is a layout heavily influenced by Niles’ wife, Kay, and daughter Kim, who graduated from UCLA with a degree in interior design. The kitchen, from Germany, is of prefabricated aluminum. The living room also is minimalist, and for a reason.
"The thing here was to build a small, controlled environment so that the economics of it are in keeping with the whole family. I wouldn't call it communal, but it's that kind of an idea. The children and the grandchildren don't feel intimidated by coming up here. They don't feel like they're transgressing onto my wife and myself's property, or that they’re ‘going to Dad's cabin.’ It's really everybody's."
Niles is well aware of the criticism his cabin has drawn, but he said he has a long history with that kind of thing.
One particularly gnarly issue occurred some years ago in Vail, which had a strict design code that stipulated every new structure should somehow be Tyrolean.
"Everybody was up in arms over this very contemporary glass object -- a piece of jewelry sitting on the hill, because it wasn't Tyrolean," he said.
"We got into this giant battle. It was like the Frankenstein movie, with the people coming down the road with torches in their hands."
Niles paused, then smiled.
"Three years later," he said, "the house appeared on their Chamber of Commerce publication. That’s the way life is."
]]>When John Dittli and Leslie Goethals moved into their fascinating strawbale home in Little Round Valley last year, it ended an eight-year running joke among Mammoth's locals.
"How's the house coming, John?"
Leslie, his wife, would roll her eyes. John would shrug.
"Still waiting for the right tile," he might say, nonplussed. Leslie would roll her eyes again.
But then one day it was miraculously done. They were in, making a home out of one of the most environmentally conscious structures in the Eastern Sierra -- so meticulous to detail and "green" sensitivity that it's practically a laboratory for green building.
They carved interesting niches for special spaces for artful collections.
It is at once rustic yet sophisticated, and heart and soul is seen in every meticulously considered and executed detail.
The three-level abode flows from one story to the next with amazing grace and attention to function as well as design.
All the beams and railings are thoughtfully chosen and worked. One tree used as a post displays the undeniable scratch marks of a bear. The east-facing deck provides sweeping views of the Glass and White Mountains.
Unique to the project are all of the recycled materials collected over time. Redwood planking is recycled from a friend's deck; used cabinets from a local business; plywood from an old airport hangar. The south-facing window wall is glass from salvaged sliding glass doors; main support beams are from a building demolition; interior doors and slate are from a condo remodel.
All finish wood, including the floors, is locally milled from sustainably harvested fuel wood. The front door is wood from the Pine Creek Mine.
This two-thousand-plus square foot space is of post and beam construction with the twenty-four-inch bales acting as insulation. The roof is matched with fiberglass batts salvaged from an old airport hangar.
The outside stucco coating adds sheer strength as well as a commercial fire rating, which is higher than residential.
It is artfully colored with ferrous sulfate (fertilizer) that is non-toxic, inexpensive, easily applied, and never needs painting -- a blessing in the harsh Eastern Sierra sun.
Additional sustainability is provided by solar panels that generate an average of ten kilowatt hours per day. This electricity flows into the grid, pushing the system backward to yield a minus balance of energy, which translates into a zero electric bill.
The system operates lighting, water pumping, kitchen appliances and a small electric heater for pre-dawn warming and Dittli and Goethals say they hope to get their radiant floor heating system functioning this coming winter.
So far, they said there has been little need for heat aside from the sun's rays flowing abundantly through the large, south-facing windows.
Generally, the house drops no more than ten degrees without heat input in an eight-hour period, even with an outside temperature of twelve below zero. With summer temperatures sometimes reaching the upper nineties, the house has reached a maximum of only seventy-eight degrees.
The water heater, kitchen stove, and furnace utilize propane that cost about six hundred dollars for the year.
Most of the light bulbs are compact fluorescent.
Next on the agenda is to connect a solar hot water system, they said.
Building with straw and grasses became popular in the late 1800s with the advent of mechanized baling equipment.
The first such buildings were constructed of bales used as oversized bricks in the Sand Hills of Nebraska.
Though originally regarded as temporary, they were comfortable and durable in the extreme variation of temperatures. Once plastered, these "temporary" structures became permanent housing.
In the early 1980s the strawbale movement made progress, especially in New Mexico, Arizona, and now, California. The first permitted strawbale home in California was built in Inyo County in the early 1990s.
The Dittli/Goethals home is the first strawbale structure permitted in Mono County.
Advocates say strawbale construction is considered a sustainable method of building. In California, rice straw that normally is burned in the field can be utilized rather than becoming a pollutant.
Rice straw has higher silicone content, which makes it stronger, with fewer organic particulates that attract insects or rodents.
Though earthquake codes require strawbale homes to be framed by conventional methods, less wood is used.
Many aspects of building with strawbale can be fun and reminiscent of wall raisings of old. Stacking bales and smearing plaster lend themselves to work parties.
Many friends helped Dittli and Goethals in different stages of building from the foundation up.
Eight years in the making, this project provided more than a just a home.
It is a testament to John's craftsmanship and Leslie's patience. Together, they created an awe-inspiring home that would impress any architect, contractor or skeptic.
]]>In Larry Walker's office there is a Sierra Summer Festival poster from 1997.
It's lovely, really -- comfortable and balanced, both in color and composition. It doesn't scream. It's as if the artist wanted it to settle in a viewer's mind and get comfortable in there.
It is no surprise that the artist of that poster was Walker himself, a longtime Mammoth resident whose work now is expressed in architectural design.
It is the easel, though, working alongside with Mammoth's magnificent natural beauty, that has informed much of his work in home design, he said.
"I'm interested in making things that please the eye as much as I possibly can," he said in an interview last summer. "That's my goal with my design and that's my goal with my art. I just like things to be pleasing, easy to be around. I like things that make sense."
The first time we encountered the interior designer Corrine Brown was the day we were standing in an older A-frame home near Canyon Lodge.
Her task was daunting: take a standard, old-style Mammoth dinosaur structure and bring it into the modern age.
She pulled it off in the Bewsher home without a hitch, and she's still doing it, trying to find that delicate balance between old and new, the rustic and modern, and keeping it appropriate to Mammoth.
"When you juxtapose the rustic with the contemporary, and toggle between those two, it can become a real bold statement." she said during in a conversation at her studio, The Finishing Touch.
It is a balancing act with which Brown seems at ease.
Brown's own work space seems to say as much about her attitude toward interior design Mammoth as anything else.
A leather couch, emblematic of an older mountain home design aesthetic, rests on a cork floor, an example of a durable and modern "green" material of which she is particularly fond.
Brown, a Certified California Interior Designer and a professional member of the American Society of Interior Designers, has a whiz-bang computer with which she can review CAD drawings -- an acronym for computer-aided design. CAD systems allow a designer to view a design from any angle with the push of a button and to zoom in or out for close-ups and long-distance views. In addition, the computer keeps track of design dependencies so that when a designer changes one value, all other values that depend on it are automatically changed accordingly.
"I've got a lot more high-end clients, and we're using a lot more CAD and 3-D drawings to communicate with the client," she said. "It's more sophisticated, and it didn't use to be that way."
On the other hand, Brown also has a veritable library of indexed periodicals, books and other reference materials -- the antithesis of the new age, paperless office.
In another room, banks of new lighting systems are suspended from above, while swatches of materials hang from the walls, forming a mosaic of old and new, dark and bright, smooth and textured.
All of these things work toward the goal of finding the delicate balance that leads to a certain comfort level.
"What people are seeking here in Mammoth is comfort," she said. "People don't necessarily want cutting edge; they want elements they feel at home with and they feel comfortable with in an everyday kind of lifestyle. There are still the traditionalists and they want traditional, classic design. We do a lot of that.
"People with really big money can come in and do that because they might have eight homes. They can have the contemporary home somewhere else, but that's not us. In Mammoth, they want low-key, they want subtle. They don't want to be obnoxious or stand out. They want to blend in to the town, and I think that's really great. I like that.
"I would like to see cutting edge design in some places, but really, I live here, too, so I want to be comfortable, too."
Within that context, however, Brown said new materials and new technologies, in lighting, for instance, can enhance a traditionalist's aesthetic.
"Where I'm seeing the biggest change is in electrical and lighting and the fixtures we're using. We're working with suspended track systems with curves that enable us to light areas that previously you couldn't get light to.
"You can drop them down from the ceiling. So we're doing a lot with that. That's really changed in how we light places, and that's a substantial change.
"We're using a lot of Lutron systems," she said "You come in and push a button and set the scene for the whole house. It turns on a set pattern of lighting. They have another button that they can push for a party scene. They can have a nighttime scene or a daytime scene, so they can push a button, and when they leave the house they can push an 'all off' button so they don't have to walk through the house, turning off the lights.
"This kind of system is particularly handy in log homes. We did a twenty-thousand square foot log home in June Lake, and you can't put in a great big bank of switches because of the logs. This way, you can do one little cover plate and have all of your switches right there. So it really cleaned that up. For log homes that's a great solution."
As for the future of mountain home interior design, Brown said she's eager to see what will evolve.
"Students in design schools, all they're getting is green design, although most of them are trained for commercial, not residential. Even so, they are brought up on all the new products, all the new trends.
"You have a whole new generation of designers who have a completely different mindset, both in architecture and interior design."
]]>If Robin Stater has a mantra in designing interiors, it's as simple as it is time-honored.
"It sounds kind of simple, but form follows function," she said recently in a conversation in her office at the Sierra Design Studio.
"I always like to look at what the function or use is of a home and go from there. If it's meant to be entertaining, or for family gatherings, or for people just to get away, start from that point, then do the design as to what the clients' needs are."
"When they come up here, they want something totally different. That's what Mammoth represents: a completely different experience."
Stater, an allied member of the American Society of Interior Designers, began her studio in 1988 and opened her Old Mammoth Road showroom in six years ago. Thirteen years ago she began her career as an interior designer, working first in what Mammoth had available. Over time, she has assembled a team of craftspeople that include Julie Johnson-Holland, principle designer and remodel design manager; Baker, for painting and special finishes; Sean and Chris Johnston for special finishes, cabinets and walls, along with kitchen designers Jessica Mascarenas and Noel Knower. Designer, Showroom Manager.
"Back then, we had affordable condos and the most expensive homes were four hundred and five hundred thousand dollars. You didn't have the same level and amount of high-end homes."
Even so, Stater brought a bold design sense into her projects. In one condo project, this one in 1998, she took a condo that had cold, white semi-glossed walls, with a warmth-sucking black cinder floor-to-ceiling fireplace, and turned it completely around.
Working with her longtime associate, painter Baker, she splashed bright red paint on one whole wall, painted the others in two shades of rosy beige and, in the bedroom, selected just one wall and gave it a sage treatment. The black fireplace was neutralized into a darker version of the walls -- but not too much darker -- and she finished off the room with a thick, neutral drape.
"I remember that condo," she said. "That was right after [the late] Tom Dempsey told me that my colors weren't intense enough."
Stater smiled at the memory, and of those days that are long since past.
"We've graduated up to higher levels, where we went from working on one hundred thousand dollar condos to five, six and seven-million dollar homes."
She said she is glad that her journey took that path.
"I'm glad we started where we did and gradually worked our way forward because we've learned a lot. I've always done things a little bit differently than some of the designers here. We make a lot of things and we've worked with a lot of local artists. It's not just a matter of picking things out of a catalog and placing it. We started doing that early on so that we could make a more artistic interior.
"Most of the contractors we work with have over twenty years working in Mammoth, and it's kind of a big deal to me that they've been in Mammoth a long time. I've seen it happen where clients have sent contractors up from Down South but we'll finish the job because the logistics up here are really tough."
Logistics are tough, the landscape is tough and, in Stater's designs, many of the interiors are rugged enough to take whatever anybody wants to throw at them, whether it's a gaggle of skiers, a troupe of mountain bikers or a herd of dirt bikers.
The form follows the function.
]]>For those who have not been through Mammoth's neighborhoods in the past several years, we wouldn't blame you if there is a strong sense of disconnect.
Urban design, utilizing new materials and cutting-edge technology, has found its way into the neighborhoods, and not just new enclaves such as the tony Bluffs.
In Old Mammoth, in the Juniper Springs area and even in the mid-town "Ghetto," designers and architects have been busy, trying out new ideas in one of the most difficult places in the nation to build.
But it is the exteriors that people notice first, and there's a lot to notice.
Mammoth's remoteness, its seismic considerations, its snowload requirements and its short building season have not conspired against new construction as much as you might think.
"Mammoth is a little bit like beachfront property," reasoned Mammoth architect Elliott Brainard. "They're not making any more of it. This is it."
So what is Mammoth to look like in the next ten years? Or even the next five?
In this issue of Mammoth Monthly, we're setting aside commercial development, such as the bold new plans by Mammoth Mountain Ski Area at Juniper Springs, to take a look at what's happening in home architecture and design.
We chose four very different architects and/or designers from among many of the fine experts in our area. We then tossed them in with two interior designers and came up with an issue that we hope lends some insight into contemporary home design.
How different are they?
John Dittli is an environmentalist, a backcountry ranger, a snow surveyor and a large-format photographer. His solar-enhanced strawbale home is perhaps the best example of "green" architecture that we have.
Edward R. Niles, the famous Malibu architect for thirty-two years he was an associate professor of architecture at USC, and his concrete, glass and steel work has been featured in every notable architecture journal in the world.
It wasn't easy, even for Niles, a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects, to build his cozy cabin in Mammoth. One of the reasons was the sudden activism of town government here -- another urban influence.
"I don't know when it started," he said, "but there is an attitude now that has been structured into government. The public now has a right to control what happens on somebody's land, or control somebody's means of expressing himself.
"Yet those are the same people who will form the art committee that will run out and hire the sculptor to put the sculpture in front of the very building they've screamed and yelled about.
"It's getting to be all legislated. The city I live in, Malibu, is one of the worst in this in the U.S. Everybody is high-powered now, they have something to say.
"If you're doing a house next door, the ordinances allow these people to do everything they possibly can to stop you from building. They tell you how they don't like your architecture. I've been fighting it now for twelve years."
One of the arbiters in taste in Mammoth is Larry Walker, a designer with the Mammoth Design Group. The town consults Walker frequently when it comes to new home projects.
Walker also has strong opinions on how Mammoth should look.
"I think I'm beginning to see a lot more contemporary types of architecture, a little more minimalist, which I think of as urban, based out of Southern California and some of our other urban areas, and I've sometimes questioned the appropriateness of that in Mammoth."
Brainard, meanwhile, has built homes all around the country, from Maine to South Florida; from New Mexico to Southern California. Building homes in Mammoth presents challenges, to be sure, but each area has its challenges, he said.
"Overall, and not just in Mammoth but in the general design world, we're moving toward a contemporary mindset," said Brainard, who comes out of the organic school begun by people like Frank Lloyd Wright and John Lautner.
"You're not seeing as much of the post-modern era of the Eighties, when we were taking architectural elements and interpreting them in a modern way. It's going more toward contemporary design lines overall.
"We're seeing more glass, more steel and more of a cleaner line with less detail. There's still a lot of timber-log accent type of work, but we really don't see the big, giant house that they have in Jackson Hole.
"That's never happened here and can't happen here. The lots are too small. I know you've seen and heard a lot of things about the controversy about the Juniper Ridge area and some of those kinds of places, and there's been some discussion with the town staff and the Planning Commission about large house development, but we really just don't have it. You'd need to have larger parcels, a half-acre minimum and maybe one or two-acre lot minimums.
"You have to work within the context of what you've got."
And so there you have it: the only consensus is that there is very little consensus.
With that said, we hope you enjoy reading about mountain home design in these pages.
Whatever that design happens to be or to become.
The ad hoc group, led by Mammoth Mountain Ski Area CEO Rusty Gregory, argued for green architecture standards in its "10 Points" document, put before the Town Council last Aug. 2.
According to Lisa Issacs, Mammoth Mountain Ski Area's Environmental Specialist, green, or "smart building," as she prefers, is the wave of the future for environmentally progressive communities such as Mammoth is aimed at becoming.
The most important aspect of "smart" building in this community, Isaccs says, is energy conservation achieved through the channeling of renewable resources such as sunlight and geothermal heat.
Strategic and liberal placement of windows and glass walls, for example, will decrease the amount of artificial light needed to sustain daytime activity, while geothermal heat could replace gas to warm showers.
The use of recycled materials like paint, insulation, wood and linoleumin the construction process, Issacs says, are other factors that contribute towards the overall "greenness" of a building, as do fixtures like low pressure shower heads and "low flow" toilets.
She says that unlike other similar recreation destination towns such as Aspen, Vail and Whistler, Mammoth is at ground zero for sustainable building.
A few houses in the Owens Valley are certifiably "green" (projects can be audited and certified by the United States Green Building Coucil in Washington D.C.), but thus far, no public buildings in the Eastern Sierra have done so.
Isaacs says the town's new Forest Service visitor center is incorporating some "green" aspects into its construction but is not likely to be certifiably "green."
"There really aren't many people specializing in smart building in climates like this," Issacs says, "and it could -- and probably will cost more do it here for that reason."
But, she continues, with some creativity and research, there is potential to build "green" structures at a comparable price, such a what Mammoth Mountain Ski Area is attempting to do with the new Eagle Lodge.
Tom Hodges, the director of planning at the ski area, says he is not anticipating much of a price increase but says any increase in capital on the project will pay for itself within ten years.
Hodges points out that Mammoth Mountain is ready to embrace the movement totally.
"Maybe in ten years all new projects we take on will be green," Hodges says. "Maybe, maybe not, but that's certainly the goal."
When Adrianne Phillips' house pulled up to her Mammoth driveway on wheels two years ago, she had no idea she would be one more number in an exploding modular housing phenomenon.
The longtime Mammoth resident had recently married, and after a decade of cramped living, it was finally time to replace the half-century-old, ailing, 8x35 travel trailer in which she'd been living.
All she wanted was something she could afford on her and her husband's Forest Service paycheck, and, equally important, something that looked good, both inside and out; nothing fancy, and not too big, maybe 1,500 square feet.
"We went looking and the cheapest thing we could find on the market was a 700-square -foot studio condominium, for over $300,000 dollars," she said. "There was no way we were going to be able to afford anything conventional, we aren't going anywhere.
"So I went shopping."
Phillips and her husband, Briant, ended up doing what more and more of those with more sense and taste than money are doing in these days.
She bought a manufactured house, also called a modular house, not to be confused with a mobile home.
Although there has always been a market for modular homes, they have often suffered from the "tacky trailer" stigma, sometimes deservedly.
It wasn't until 2003, when San Francisco-based Dwell magazine challenged sixteen nationally-recognized architects to build an attractive modular house for no more than $200,000, that modular housing took off. The contest triggered a wave of demand for modular housing, and along with it, a tremendous increase in the styles and choices available.
When the Phillips' house was shipped from the dealer in Susanville, it arrived in two giant pieces, complete with light fixtures, carpet, microwave, and even an optional washer and dryer, which they decided to replace with their own brand.
The two-bedroom, two-bath 1,500-square-foot house with a den, vaulted ceiling and huge bay windows cost the Phillips well under $100 dollars a square foot. And that included the shipping, as well as the set -up of the house. That's less than half the going rate of $250 dollars a square foot for conventional "stick–built" houses.
The house is undeniably attractive. Large, roomy, with clean, strong lines and nine-foot high windows open to the pines, the house looks like any conventional house.
Though the walls for it were built in a factory (hence the name modular house), they are of the conventional "tape and texture" (sheetrock) construction, and the house has personalized architectural details throughout, such as tile edging on the kitchen counters, solid alder wood cabinets, and a skylight. In other words, the Phillips had almost every option that an owner of a custom built house would have, except for the fact that modular home buyers are restricted to choosing from available, selected floor plans.
"This house would have cost two to three times as much if we had it built custom," she said. "This way, we got so much more for our money. And we love it."
The Phillipses aren't the only ones in the Eastern Sierra to discover modular housing. Out in the burgeoning Tri-Valley area at the foot of the White Mountains, Danny and Valerie Maddock say they will soon offer 200 acres of subdivided land for sale, each parcel complete with a special "chalet-style" modular house, built in Germany and shipped across the Atlantic.
Even with the shipping costs, Maddock knows he will still make a profit, because nowhere else in the Eastern Sierra can you get land and a modest-sized home for around $300,000 dollars.
"It's pretty simple," he said. "They look great, they function as well as any house, and they are affordable. What's there to argue?"
]]>The old standby Mammoth A-frame does not have much of a reputation, as Mark and Mary Anne Bewsher discovered as soon as they bought one.
"The contractors told us when we started, ‘Why put so much money into something when you could tear it down and build a much more expensive home?'" Mark Bewsher said.
But the Bewshers, who split their time between Mammoth and the Bay Area, had a different idea altogether, and the happy result is one of the more interesting examples of modern home design in town.
Working with Corinne Brown at The Finishing Touch, the couple turned a funky, old A-frame into what Mary Anne Bewsher said is a home based on "simplicity and modernity."
"I like the simplicity and purity -- the architectural bones -- when you're inside an A-frame," she said. "There really isn't any substitute for good architectural bones from inside a house."
"Mark and Mary Anne have a real contemporary aesthetic," Brown said, "and the A-frame is perfect for that because it's a pure geometric form -- a triangle. The furnishings we chose were clean and contemporary, and there were a lot of things with a geometric nature.
"In one part of the house, we used circle mirrors that come out from the side of the sloping walls on articulated arms. We used circles and triangles and really played that up. The geometric nature of the A-frame has been repeated throughout the whole house."
Moreover, the couple chose as many natural materials as they could to reference the environment around them, creating a living space that also is respectful of the surroundings.
"We felt it was sufficient for our needs," Mary Anne Bewsher said. "I like the feeling of living carefully, respectfully, and simply in the environment and not having to have more space than we need."
Added her husband: "The more stuff you have and the bigger the house, the more maintenance headaches you've got."
One of the problems of an A-frame house is, of course, what to do with the sloping walls. The Bewshers took advantage of the angling walls, building in a desk, drawers, and a spot for a flat-panel, LCD television.
In addition, the furniture "floats" in the middle of the room instead of being pushed up against the sloping sides.
Another challenge was lighting. Many of the lights are dropped from the ceiling, and the couple chose custom-made "hockey-puck" light canisters for places such as the kitchen. Throughout the house, the Bewshers used wall sconces to light difficult spots, then added a really terrific touch: They removed all the traditional doors and replaced them with opaque glass doors, letting the light flow throughout the home.
For the railings on the deck and stairs, the Bewshers called on Tony Lober at Sierra Reflections, who installed crackled glass panels.
"There's a really open feeling in an A-frame," Mary Anne Bewsher said, "and we tried to maximize that by bringing more light in between the rooms."
One of the many surprising aspects of the home is the use of concrete, into which is embedded everything from sea glass to coins from faraway places.
"Concrete is an old and seemingly lowly material," Mary Anne Bewsher said, "and it's amazing what they're doing with concrete. We're finding new use for an old but natural material."
Elsewhere, the Bewshers have heated slate floors in each room except for the bedroom and living room, and they have metalwork crafted by Mammoth's Henry Means, who built a very modern, striking entryway.
Taken as a whole, the entire home is so well done that it will force even the most jaded to reassess his or her opinion of the old Mammoth A-frame.
When Means, 42, bought the structure in 1995, it wasn't much more than a typical, down-at-the-heels summer cabin that had gone through at least two expansions. But now it's something of a wonder, redesigned and remodeled largely using scrap that Means, an 18-year-employee at Mammoth Mountain, brought down off the hill.
"[The house] was all kind of worn out. It had been here for a while," he said.
By collecting scrap wood from shipping pallets, iron and steel from the Mountain's scrap heap, plus whatever else he could scavenge around town, Means has built a truly unique, only-in-Mammoth home for his family.
"This," he said of the house, "is the history of Mammoth Mountain."
The distinctive and stylish siding on the home was handcrafted from the wooden pine crates in which the Mountain's Doppelmeyer chairlifts and gondolas were shipped.
"I was looking at siding, and it would have cost thousands of dollars for us to do it," he said. "We'd just started doing the Doppelmeyer chairlifts -- this was when we first started redoing Chair 1. The grips came in these 6X6 boxes. I'm not sure where the wood came from, but it's knotless, beautiful wood. So I started breaking the boxes apart and I got it home. It took me a few years to get enough to finally finish, but I just started working and doing the house all the way around. And it ended up not costing anything -- just a lot of labor."
Outside, the Means' original rock-and-mortar chimney is further bolstered by concrete, along with steel recycled from the Mountain's old gondola towers. The main entry's metalwork was fashioned from scrap from The Timbers project, across town.
The sliding doors on the front of the house came from the Mountain, too. Originally, they were slider doors. Means merely took the frames off them and put them where he wanted them.
"Whenever I needed wood for studs, and things like that, or whatever other kind of thing I needed to do for the house, I just started collecting whatever I could."
Inside, the sheetrock on the walls was all reclaimed from various projects. In the backyard, Means built a tree house for his daughter, with facades left over from the old Gravity Games.
"I went up in the middle of a blizzard to get all that wood," he said. "It was a full-on, three-foot snowstorm, and we were trying to get that stuff out because it was getting buried. I've been using that for studs and whatever I needed for years."
Means, who this year has gone into metalwork full time and has been working in many of the new structures in town, has a relatively simple philosophy of home design.
"If anything, I like to pick something up and keep it going," he said. "I like new, but I've always liked to restore and remodel things. The people who are local tend to remodel and fix things, but a lot of other people want that ‘new' dimension."
The trucks were headed for Old Mammoth Road near the Snowcreek Athletic Club, where a concrete slab was ready to receive the first of four 8-unit buildings. On the trucks were pieces of the building, infrastructure already contained.
Soon, the building was up -- a so-called "modular" or "factory- built" structure that is indicative of the kind of housing Mammoth is likely to see in the immediate future.
"It's a very quick process," said Andrea Clark, director of Mammoth Lakes Housing, Inc., in an understatement.
The real trick was not in acquiring the buildings, but in getting buildings that meet Mammoth's snow-load requirements, as well as California's earthquake codes.
That nut was finally cracked by Guerdon Enterprises, of Boise, Idaho, which also built an entire subdivision of modular housing in San Jose as well as a subdivision outside Eagle, Colo., home of Vail.
With housing costs through the roof and the construction season short in Mammoth, Clark said she sees modular buildings as a trend.
"I expect this process to be replicated, although I don't think it will replace the high-end, single family
home market."
As of mid-August, the classifieds page had been visited 32,169 times since January 1, 2006.
One hundred and fourteen readers had registered to submit ads.
"This is a terrific utility for both sellers and buyers, owners and renters," said George Shirk, editor in chief of MammothLocal.com.
"Because Mammoth's people live all over the place, from Southern California to right here in town, it makes sense to create a digital marketplace. Obviously, the numbers show that it is a popular and useful utility."
]]>