Ghislaine Viñas and S2 Architects Revive an Aspen Ski Home

By Stephen Wallis

March 2, 2024

https://interiordesign.net/designwire/ghislaine-vinas-and-s2-architects-design-aspen-home

There’s no mistaking the Aspen, Colorado, home of art collector Paige West and tech executive Christopher Cooper—especially when the garage door is open. Inside, the paneled walls and ski lockers are painted stop-sign red, while carpeting and benches are a complementary crimson shade. “I really like the connection to the Swiss flag and ski patrol,” West says of the arresting color, which is a recurring theme throughout the interiors masterminded by her longtime friend and collaborator, designer Ghislaine Viñas. “I’m not sure anybody’s ever seen a red garage,” West adds. “I think it’s perfect.”

Growing up in Philadelphia, West developed a love of skiing in the nearby Poconos. When she was a teenager, the family started taking ski trips to Colorado, and in the mid-’80’s her parents decided to buy a place in Aspen. A decade later they acquired the house next door, adding more space for friends and relatives, including West, who put her three boys (now teenagers themselves) on the slopes at an early age. Her family, based in New York, has spent nearly every Christmas in Aspen. So, when West’s parents considered selling both residences a few years ago, she and Cooper (everyone calls him “Coop”) looked at buying or building a new place of their own. But West says she got “a little sentimental” and convinced her parents she should purchase the second house from them—and give it a major overhaul.

West enlisted Joseph Spears, principal of Aspen firm S2 Architects, to reimagine the three-level, nearly 6,000-square-foot structure. Out went the mushroom-brown horizontal siding, replaced with bolder charcoal-hued vertical planks. The low-pitched hipped roof was swapped for a strikingly contemporary gabled one that extends out from the living room, creating deep eaves over a cantilevered balcony with glass balustrade. The entire southern facade, which previously had few windows, is now dominated by expanses of glass. “Paige and Coop like living in bright, engaging spaces,” Spears says. “So we opened everything up to make it a lighter chalet sort of idea.”

Spears worked with Viñas on the interior finishes, opting for a limited palette. Throughout, pale white oak was used for floors, millwork, and many ceilings. “Paige wanted the place to feel very Scandinavian and simple,” says Viñas, who cites inspirations ranging from Aspen’s early Swedish settlers and traditional Alpine architecture to vintage ski bum culture. “We just riffed on things we admired. Then Paige installed her art, adding that amazing contemporary twist.”

West has the luxury of drawing from some 3,800 artworks she has assembled with her father, Alfred West Jr., executive chairman of the financial services firm SEI. She serves as the West Collection’s curator and is overseeing construction of a future home for its display in Philadelphia. West also operated the New York gallery Mixed Greens for nearly two decades and maintains relationships with many of the artists she showed. That includes Mark Mulroney, whom she commissioned to create a mural for the entry stairwell, a cartoonlike mashup of references to Aspen’s wintry landscape and log cabins. “There’s humor and life—it’s bright and happy and very much how we want you to feel here,” West describes.

Nicknamed the All Inn, the house has been tailored for entertaining. The main social hub is an airy top-level great room with an open kitchen plus a dining area that accommodates 14 seated on traditional Tyrolean–style chairs painted with Swedish folk motifs. Viñas furnished the living area with a sprawling leather-and- wool sectional as well as vintage art deco chairs cushioned with sheepskin throws. In warmer weather, the glass doors can be opened completely to the terrace—outfitted with more red furniture—while on chillier days, there’s usually a fire roaring. Aspen regulations prohibit new woodburning fireplaces, so the ability to keep this one was a prime reason to renovate rather than rebuild. Spears gave the hearth more presence by fashioning a monumental blackened-steel surround with niches for logs and a TV, which cleverly disappears behind a Minako Abe landscape painting that slides on rails.

Each of the home’s eight bedrooms has its own bath and distinctive art and design elements. In a kid’s bedroom, for example, Viñas hung a 1960’s Slim Aarons photograph of skiers lounging on a Swiss mountainside atop a mural of the same image. She enlivened one guest room’s orange four-poster with carvings of birds common to Aspen, and outfitted the undulating headboard of another’s glossy banana-yellow bed with artwork by Mulroney.

The idiosyncratic details extend to the bathrooms. “When we started, every one was going to be identical,” Viñas notes. “In the end, they could not have been more different. There is a ridiculous amount of detailing, from tile inlays to cabinetry.”

Storage was a major consideration, particularly with all the gear required for winter sports. In addition to the garage ski storage, there’s a lodge-style basement locker room with bright-red benches for pulling on boots and outerwear closets hand-painted with lively folk patterns by Viñas’s artist daughter, Saskia Luna Viñas (who executed a similar treatment in the mudroom). Jenna Pino, the firm’s design director, created bespoke wallpaper panels filled with references to the family. “It has lots of little private stories and all sorts of characters,” Viñas says. “Friends are in there, their kids, their dogs.”

The project took three years start to finish, which speaks to the level of meticulous detail involved. “It was a lengthy process, but that’s why we got so much personality into this,” Viñas summarizes. “The house has a lot of personality.”