For many years, Brian and Trisha Coffman considered Park City, Utah, a great vacation spot. They had family in the area and loved everything the mountains had to offer, including hiking, mountain biking and skiing, as well as the impressive change of seasons as green hills gave way to white banks of snow.
Compared to Phoenix, where they lived for about 30 years, it evoked a sense of awe. “It’s a little like pinching me,” said Ms. Coffman, 51, the founder of interior design firm T. Haus, describing the area’s natural beauty. “We spent more and more time up here.”
In 2018, they began looking for a vacation home in Park City that they wanted to use as a getaway and investment property to rent out when they weren’t there. They made a few offers on townhouses and condos that didn’t work out, so they switched gears and started looking for land where they could build a home instead.
In the community of Summit Park, about 12 miles northwest of downtown Park City, they found a steeply sloping lot of just under an acre with views of evergreens and mountains. They bought it in February 2020 for $87,000.
Then the pandemic came and their ideas about the property changed. Mr. Coffman, 53, who works in finance, no longer needed to be in Phoenix and began working remotely. One of their two daughters was already in college and the other was about to graduate high school, which would make them empty nesters. This eliminated another reason to say in Phoenix.
“It was a good time for a new chapter and a complete change,” Ms. Coffman said. Instead of looking at Summit Park as a vacation property, she noted, “We changed our strategy and said, ‘Hey, maybe we should move here full-time.'”
For help building their new home, they turned to Klima Architecture, a Park City-based firm that had designed a number of modern mountain homes that they admired. Klima founder Chris Price, who also lives in Summit Park, was immediately impressed with the property.
“It’s extreme,” Mr. Price said, noting that the land slopes away from the road at about a 45-degree angle. “It’s incredibly steep.”
But he enjoyed the challenge. “It became an exercise in working with the land, creating something that suited the site and designing something that was even plausible to build,” Mr. Price said.
After much consideration, his solution was a four-story, 3,500-square-foot home that starts with a two-car garage at street level and follows the slope of the site downhill. The kitchen, living room and dining room are below the garage. The master suite, a gym and laundry room are another level down. On the lowest level there are two additional bedrooms, two bathrooms and an office.
A staircase with open wooden steps and terrazzo platforms surrounded by a glass wall connects the four levels and acts almost like a viewing tower. “You’re at 30 feet in the air, looking directly at these huge, majestic evergreens and these peek-a-boo views of distant mountains,” Mr. Price said.
The home’s roofline mimics the slope of the terrain, making the structure look like an oversized funicular while also aiding in snow shedding. To keep the material palette simple, Ms. Coffman and Mr. Price decided to cover most of the structure with ribbed, powder-coated black steel panels, but line the garage door cutouts with cedar for visual warmth.
Inside, Ms. Coffman sought to balance the robustness of hard architectural materials like steel and concrete with warm woods and soft textiles in beige and gray tones to give the home a cozy feel. In the kitchen, whose ceiling and walls are clad in Western hemlock, she designed a bleached walnut and steel island topped with charcoal Caesarstone. For lighting, she worked with Lucent Lightshop to design a custom blackened and natural brass chandelier.
In the living room, she covered the fireplace wall with linear-groove plaster and added a long cushion to a built-in bench that extends from the fireplace. A wool rug, furry skins and organically shaped vintage lounge chairs by Adrian Pearsall add softness.
In the master bedroom, she placed a bed full of pillows and a high upholstered headboard against a wall covered in light brown lime plaster. The plaster “has texture and nuance and changes with light in a way that a painted surface doesn’t,” Ms. Coffman said. “It just feels warm and inviting, which I think is important for any master suite.”
The house took two and a half years to build and cost about $500 per square foot. The couple moved in as soon as it was completed in October 2024.
“It was a complete 180-degree turn from the desert lifestyle to living above 7,000 feet in the mountains,” Ms. Coffman said. But she and Mr. Coffman are ready for the change, she noted: “It’s really dreamy.”