Building in these mountains, and their “extreme topographies” as Upwall put it, requires a certain skill set, wherewithal, and history with the land. Luckily for the project, the Hill brothers and White come equipped with all three of those. It literally starts with the very foundation of the home, Gary Hill explained. On this particular hillside, you scrape off six or eight inches of soil, and you’re going to find rock. Solid rock. Everywhere you dig. Then, to the veteran builder, it gets exciting.
“From there, you bring in the heavy equipment,” he recalled. “Either you're going to be using the large grinders on the excavation equipment, or you'll be using blasting and different techniques in order to manage the excavation phase.”
For the Pinnacle Sky home, the Midway Construction team dug into the mountainside some 15 feet deep for the driveway area alone. One positive of all of this hard rock construction?
“No settling, of course,” Gary Hill said with a smile. “The homes are very, very well established."
It’s a good thing the Pinnacle Sky project has a solid base because as you see it rising out of the mountain it’s clear that it weighs ... a lot. How else would you describe a build that features some 78 Marvin Modern windows and 13 Modern Multi-slide doors, including one unit that’s frame is more than 27 feet wide and features five panels that each weigh roughly 362 pounds? Upwall described the topography as extreme; it’s also a good way to describe the home itself.
But where seeing this bold, boundary-pushing home from the outside is a sight to behold, once inside, Upwall’s desire switches completely. In a way, he doesn’t want you to see the house at all. For what he describes as his “mountain modern” homes, the views become paramount — and to help him achieve this emphasis on the surrounding landscape, he turned to the Modern collection of windows and doors. With their narrow and consistent sightlines and expansive sheets of glass, they were the perfect choice to frame the home’s breathtaking panoramic views.
The whole modern philosophy is to get out of the way of the view. Even though they're beautiful windows, I'm not looking at the windows. I'm looking through the eyes of the house.”
Michael Upwall
Architect
Some particular aspects of Upwall’s window and door designs — like the striking combination of transom windows and a multi-slide door in the great room — provided some very specific engineering challenges to the team. Planning for and installing a fully operational door of this size wasn’t the formidable part: It was placing a full width of transom windows on top of it that proved to be daunting. Why? Because as White explained, you can’t exactly put the full weight of 2,500 pounds of window on top of a sliding door. The solution was nothing short of the engineering sleight of hand you’d expect from a window dealer and builders who’ve been here before. The team along with engineers devised a system of vertical steel tubes between each transom window that was in turn connected to a horizontal steel beam attached to the home’s roof.
“[The end result] keeps the weight of the transoms off of the door,” White concluded. “It's holding it up so there's nothing compressing down on the top of the door.”
“Extreme” wasn’t confined to the home’s design or construction: it also came up in discussing the home’s mountainous locale. Heavy snows, freezing temperatures, summer heat, and high winds put homes — and their windows and doors — in the area to the test. For Upwall and the team, this is another place where Modern excels. The collection’s High-Density Fiberglass construction provides the optimal thermal and structural performance needed for the area’s pendulum-like temperature ranges and severe weather. “In a home of this magnitude, with this much glass, the glass needs to be able to perform,” White said. “It makes a huge difference here up in the mountains where we live.”
Time and time again, the team joined together to solve the engineering and product selection riddles needed to take the home from dream to reality. One of the key partners along the way: Marvin.
One of the great things about Marvin is they literally will find a solution for every application. When you propose something that's difficult or different, they're like, 'Hey, let's figure this out. Let's figure out a way to get it done.'"
Jeff Hill
Builder, Midway Construction Company
White agreed: "We've worked together over the years because [Upwall] will draw crazy cool, huge, big pieces of glass and says, ‘Jim, you go figure out how to make this happen for me,'" he recalled. “And so it's been a partnership of trust there over the years, working together on being able to produce this original painting that he's created."
White wasn’t alone in making art metaphors when it came to describing Upwall’s vision and the collaboration between architect, builder, dealer partners, and a manufacturer needed to create his daring and audacious designs: "I want to have control of the paintbrush," Upwall said. "I don't want someone to dictate the stroke for me."
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