Sun Valley

It's been said there are more architects per capita in Sun Valley than anywhere else in the world. For our program "Designing Idaho," we visited a few of them, to get their perspective on Idaho's residential wonderland.

"There's something very different about every site," says Sun Valley architect Jack Smith. "Every site is as different as a fingerprint."

Smith's pyramid or tipi house sits on a two-to-one isosceles grid. "It fit the contours exactly; so as soon as I did that, I knew that was the appropriate grid to suit this site."

"I looked to the larger picture, of the mountains, of the historical reference of the Native Americans. This house has a considerable amount of metaphor in it."

Smith had to win over his neighbors with his original design. "One one liked it. No one likes change. If we had put a simple home up, no problem. But this is a little more advanced. They fought us. The county fought us and so on."

But now his house is featured in books and he even gets fan mail. "I don't believe an architecture is really an architecture unless it has spirt in it, a numinous."

But Smith believes his profession is losing ground, in part because too many architects are willing to give in to the "starter castle" mentality of the super rich. And the pricey Sun Valley area is not immune. "Architecture should be more than keeping the rain out. It should uplift the spirit and the soul and take you to places maybe you wouldn't be. And great architecture has always done that."

Architect Mark Pynn prides himself on making his buildings fit the landscape. By using the colors and textures of the native grasses and shrubs, his houses blend in to the surrounding hillside.

"To do good architecture," says Pynn, "it's a trio of parties that make it happen. The client, who is the patron of the project. The contractor, who is the craftsman and builder of the project. And the architect, and no one element should have dominance over the other in terms of the process."

According to Pynn, one of the challenges in Sun Valley "is that we have many clients who have large budgets and expect large structures built for them and their egos. What I try to do... is encourage them to show off quality more than quantity."