New "Stone Houses" Book Highlights Two Timeless JLF Architects Stone Projects in Wyoming and California

BOZEMAN, Mt., Aug. 15, 2018 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ -- From offices in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, and Bozeman, Montana, JLF Architects draws on reclaimed materials to build houses that stand in the company of villas, castles and contemporary structures that pepper the globe. Of the 27 homes featured in the just-released coffee table book Stone Houses: Natural Forms in Historic and Modern Homes (Rizzoli, June 2018) by Linda Leigh Paul, two residences from the design-build team of JLF Architects and Big-D Signature construction are showcased for the creative use of stone.

The new book elegantly documents the oldest element of architecture: stone. The more than two dozen homes featured in Stone Houses range from primitive to cutting-edge modern and date from 1790 to the present. New and old structures represent locations from Jamaica to Switzerland and a dozen states in the U.S., illustrating unique variations of stonework that represent time, place and craftsmanship – including the two houses from JLF Architects, one near Jackson, Wyoming, and the other in Newport Beach, California, that incorporate stone with innovative grace.

"The stone houses in this book include remnants of forgotten, abandoned, or displaced stone architecture," the author writes in the introduction to Stone Houses. "They are built with materials that were discovered by accident or salvage and used with a laborious and yielding eagerness to rejoin them with a knowledge-bearing existence." That knowledge, she explains, comes from the human discovery of each rock: that it could be useful, that it could bear the weight needed to shelter its inhabitants. With that, each home embodies nostalgia in form and function. And JLF Architects is no stranger to that inherent connection between humans and the landscape. The featured JLF projects echo the author's desire to honor the age-old forms harvested from the land and created with stone.

Renowned for creating buildings that resonate with a sense of place, the design-build team of JLF Architects and Big-D Signature Group constructed the two extremely different houses selected for inclusion in Stone Houses with a diverse application of stonework. In the case of The Creamery in Wyoming, the original form of the home was defined by an 1800s-era dairy barn found in a Montana pasture. JLF principal designer Paul Bertelli discovered the building and proposed the incorporation of the stones into an architectural design for a client with a passion for collecting antiques.

"It was the ultimate antique," Bertelli says with genuine reverence for the building. The client jumped at the opportunity and the design-build team subsequently numbered each stone, dismantled the structure piece-by-piece, transported it by truck over several mountain passes and hundreds of miles to be reassembled on a new site at the confluence of the Snake and Gros Ventre Rivers. The scale of the original simple agricultural building defined the adjoining structures and looks as if it has been in place for centuries.

Honoring both the location and the materials used in their projects, JLF Architects and Big-D Signature construct houses that incorporate sensitivity to the client's taste with cues from the landscape and unparalleled artisanal craftsmanship. The second JLF Architects house featured in Stone Houses is perched on a hillside overlooking the Pacific Ocean in Newport Beach, California. The home bridges art, history and architecture with character that can only be assembled through time, generations and an appreciation for details.

Given that the owners are the third generation to live on this property, the form of Casa de los Peregrinos was shaped by a love of that family's history and influenced by the traditions of older, earlier architects, such as Edwin Lutyens. For his part, JLF Architects' Bertelli acknowledges the past by layering romantic elements, such as arched windows and doorways, exposed timbers, multiple library niches and dramatic wall space to display an extensive art collection inside the house.

The Casa's stone work both inside and out grounds the building with a sense of evolving styles that range from what appear to be ancient ballast stones on the floor to drystack walls to hand-harvested boulders that comprise a fireplace surrounded by cozy wingback chairs. Extraordinary vignettes of handblown glass, sculpture and custom lighting from all over the world punctuate reclaimed timbers and stone harvested from Montana, Wyoming and Canada as well as antique roof tiles from Provence and reclaimed oak flooring from New England. JLF Architects integrated every element and detail to craft a home that encompasses the generations of history and a lifetime of travel.

About JLF Architects:
Building timeless structures rooted in integrity and simple elegance, JLF Architects, with offices in Bozeman, Montana; Jackson, Wyoming; and Park City, Utah, applies distinctive solutions and materials to create place-based houses marked by the influences of landscapes from the Rocky Mountains to the Eastern Seaboard. JLF Architects has established a genuine alliance with Big-D Signature, built over 17 years of working together, to create a streamlined design-build process that benefits clients. Winners of Mountain Living magazine's 2016 Home of the Year, the JLF Architects and Big-D Signature design-build team unites passionate architects with dedicated builders to enable the collective imagination of visionary artisans working with visionary clients. For more information visit http://www.JLFArchitects.com.

SOURCE JFL Architects