Canyon House by Grunsfeld Shafer Architects

Located in a mountainous scenery south of Salt Lake City, on the inclined hill of Little Cottonwood Canyon, the house you see above is an amazing example of what imagination can do to shapes. Work of Grunsfeld Shafer Architects, the Canyon House consists of three components, the Pavilion, a Parterre, and a Box. It blends really well with the scenery with all its exposed steel, concrete, native rock, cedar, and glass mosaic tiles, making it an amazing place. Pretty amazing and a real solution for those hot summer days we’ve been dealing with, last year. Like it?


The selection of materials indigenous to the mountainside are collaged together to reflect the primitive and natural beauty of the terrain through the use of exposed structural steel, architectural concrete, native rock, cedar, and glass mosaic tiles, whose colors are reminiscent of the earth’s minerals.

The Pavilion’s form is defined by a sculptural roof that floats above an expansive living room and several bedrooms which embrace the solitude of native grasses, wild flowers, scrub oak, granite outcroppings, and wildlife. Completely exposed, the living room features eighteen-foot high sheets of canted glass which contort toward panoramas of brilliant sunsets and thunderstorms that frequently engulf the Great Salt Lake valley and nearby Antelope Island.

The Parterre provides exterior spaces for lounging and entertaining, both in winter and summer; extensions of interior spaces or interstitial spaces between the house’s components. The simple form and quite demeanor of the Box houses both public and private spaces, including an exercise room, bathroom, ski storage room, and sauna on the lower level; kitchen, dining room, powder room, and closets on the first level; and the master bedroom and office on the upper level. The Box’s highly controlled fenestration frames human-scaled views while providing a secluded and tranquil area which complements and contrasts with the voyeuristic transparency of the Pavilion.