Growing up in Austin, Texas, Elizabeth Stanley’s relationship with architecture began long before blueprints and boards—shaped instead by the rhythm of construction sites and the scent of fresh sawdust in the air. The daughter of a respected homebuilder, she accompanied her father from an early age, absorbing the craft of creating spaces and developing an instinctive reverence for design that felt inevitable.
In 2008, she established her own Austin-based studio, and in the years since, Elizabeth Stanley Design has become synonymous with thoughtfully refined interiors—warm, quietly confident spaces where past and present converse with ease, and natural materials take pride of place.
Drawn as much to the outdoors as to the built environment, Stanley and her husband, private investor Aaron Stanley, are devoted skiers. Several years ago, Aspen, Colorado, emerged as the natural setting for a second family retreat. When an 11-acre parcel on a sunlit southern slope of the Elk Mountains surfaced—complete with permitted plans by renowned Aspen architect Cristof Eigelberger—the decision was swift. “We put it under contract sight unseen,” Stanley recalls. “In Aspen, securing building permits today is almost unheard of.
The plans—for a 5,750-square-foot composition of interconnected rectilinear volumes—leaned toward a sleeker modernity than Stanley had initially envisioned. Still, as she notes, “I knew I could work with Cristof on the existing design to make it more ours.”
Eigelberger, in turn, intuitively understood her longing for a home rich in character and soul. Their shared philosophy, he explains, was rooted in a singular belief: that every design gesture should serve to reconnect the architecture to the land it inhabits.
After three years devoted to siting, construction, and the careful choreography of the landscape, the Stanleys and their three children found themselves so deeply enamored with both the home and Aspen’s rare, year-round allure that they chose to make it their full-time residence. Layered with narrative and organically attuned to its surroundings, the four-bedroom retreat fulfills Stanley’s guiding vision: “I wanted this place to feel as crusty and Rocky Mountain–rustic as possible,” she says.
That sensibility reveals itself first on the exterior, where walls clad in mountain ash granite anchor the house firmly to its alpine setting, creating a seamless dialogue with the terrain. The views—lush and expansive in summer, stark and cinematic in winter—are framed by sweeping steel windows installed throughout the home. Eigelberger, an Aspen native from what he recalls as “the Hunter S. Thompson, ski-bum, rock climber era,” brings an intimate understanding of the land, knowing precisely where the sun rises and sets—and how its shifting light animates the architecture across the day and seasons.
A more spectral presence is the blackened shou sugi ban wood Stanley chose for portions of the exterior. A few miles up Castle Creek Valley lies Ashcroft, a silver-mining ghost town. “So much aged and weathered wood in Ashcroft resembles shou sugi ban,” she says, “and I was picking up on that history.”
Inside, Stanley and Eigelberger sourced oak fence boards for many walls and ceilings and salvaged 12-inch-wide farm threshing boards for some of the floors. Old oak also has its say in the steps of the sculptural blackened-steel central staircase.
More granite went into the living room’s monumental fireplace, its rough-hewn mantelpiece executed with finger tones. Elsewhere, Stanley finished the walls in a textured, soft gray plaster, echoing the hue of aspen tree bark. Further stitching together of indoors and outside happens underfoot, as fractured black flagstones extend from the entry through much of the living space and onto the terrace beyond.
True to her elevated ranchland aesthetic, Stanley devised the kitchen’s distinctively dovetailed oak cabinetry with open shelves that display earthy, hand-thrown ceramic dinnerware alongside her collection of vintage wooden bowls. “It was wonderful to watch Elizabeth bring an overall rusticity to the house,” Eigelberger says.
Balancing cattle-country affability with modernist flair, Stanley peppered the spaces with choice 20th-century furnishings while flavoring the fusion with works by such contemporary artists as Mary Weatherford, Ed Ruscha, and Adriana Varejão. In a home premised on dynamic dualities—rugged and refined, shadowy and bright, hard and soft—sheepskin’s fluffy allure adds warmth to floors and seating from one room to the next. Opposite the fireplace, 1950s Dutch modernist armchairs are reupholstered in fleece, while small Icelandic pelts are draped over the dining room’s vintage Charlotte Perriand chairs, and larger ones are ready for drops in temperature when the family eats outside.
Stanley loves to cook and entertain in all seasons, and the family takes advantage of the terrace’s Argentine-style grill and Rocky Mountain–scale firepit year-round. For a festive après-ski party on New Year’s Day, she says, “I piled snow on top of our outdoor dining table and filled it with Champagne and oysters and caviar.” There were around 75 guests, she figures. And she has room for lots more.
@Galerie
