(Editor's Note: This story first appeared in the Mountain Home Design 2007 issue of Mammoth Monthly magazine. Download the entire magazine here)

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.

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Mammoth Home And Design Special
Moving Toward Contemporary
Elliott Brainard's Tree House
The Niles Family 'Cabin'
Stretching The Meaning Of 'Green'
Larry Walker And Artistic Design
Corrine Brown And The New Technology
Robin Stater's Rugged Designs

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Interior designers, meanwhile, are taking older, traditional homes and remaking the insides with flat-panel televisions, solar shading, new lighting systems and new kitchen surfaces.

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.

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