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"View Slideshow\n\nOne dictionary defines cozy as \"snugly warm and comfortable.\" Another says it means \"warmly intimate or friendly.\" And all those words are exactly how a couple with three teenage sons wanted their new house in Colorado's ski country to be described: warm, comfortable, intimate and friendly. \"Number one\u2014we want cozy,\" the wife told the architects and interior designers. \"We didn't want soaring ceilings and big empty spaces,\" she explains. \"We wanted a simple house so that we could enjoy it, a place in which you could walk in with mud on your shoes and there wouldn't be a big fuss.\"\n\nBut it's not so easy to find a cozy spot for a house on a 12,000-acre ranch, more than 8,000 feet high on the western slopes of the Rocky Mountains. Before doing anything else, the couple's architect, Gordon Pierce, scouted the property in a helicopter to find likely sites, then packed everyone off in snowmobiles to make the final selection. The choice was a flat apron of land, open to the sun yet protected from fierce mountain winds.\n\n\"I don't know what our litmus test was, but when we looked at something, we would say, This is the ranch, and this isn't.' \"\n\n\"We wanted to preserve the land as it's always been,\" says the husband. Honoring that sentiment, Pierce, the design principal of Resort Design Architects, a firm based in San Francisco and Avon, Colorado, worked with project architect Stuart Smith to design what he calls a \"traditional mountain home\"\u2014one that nestles on the land rather than dominating it. To reduce its profile yet still provide room for guests, as well as the couple and their three sons, Pierce divided the residence in two. The main house contains family living quarters and a large recreation area dubbed the barn. One hundred and twenty feet away is the two-story guesthouse, which has two bedrooms and its own sitting room.\n\nTo design the interiors, the couple picked Elissa Cullman, whose firm, Manhattan's Cullman &amp;amp; Kravis, had done two previous interiors for the couple, as well as two homes for the husband's sister. \"Ellie's wonderful about interpreting your vision and turning it into something comfortable and inviting,\" says the wife. Cozy the couple wanted. What they did not want was, in the wife's words, \"a western mountainy theme-park look, with antlers everywhere.\"\n\nCullman and Claire Ratliff, one of her firm's senior designers, didn't want a miniature antler-and-edelweiss Disneyland either. \"We didn't want the clich\u00E9s of western design,\" says Cullman. \"We wanted the house to be casual but not simple. I don't know what our litmus test was, but when we looked at something, we would say, This is the ranch, and this isn't.' \"\n\n\"Studied casual\" is a phrase Cullman likes, and the achievement of that effect requires considerable sophistication. In the living room, for example, the wool rug has a pattern of concentric squares that suggest a Log Cabin quilt\u2014\"but a Log Cabin quilt designed by Josef Albers,\" says Ratliff. A dramatic Jack Goldstein painting of lightning strikes shows what the family might see from their living room windows during a Colorado summer. In contrast to the rough stone walls, the upholstery and pillows are smooth enough to soothe a baby. The wife saw to that, giving every fabric her own touch test before approving its purchase.\n\nIn the family room, Cullman acknowledged that the house is still part of a working sheep and cattle ranch by hanging antique tools\u2014augers and calipers\u2014on adjoining walls. In the barn, which, at 30 by 50 feet, is large enough for a band and a hoedown, she went even more western, covering the sofas in a red-and-brown tartan and placing old saddles atop the bar stools. A good designer has a good eye for what works in a room, and what works doesn't have to be expensive. For instance, Ratliff found the collection of shiny seltzer bottles, on the bar's top shelf, in a used-goods store in a nearby town and quickly carted them away.\n\nThey wanted their house to be part of the land, the owners said, and both the architects and designers were always aware that they had to accept second billing to a landscape as beautiful as any on earth. The owners hope to keep it that way. They are already considering a possible partnership with a group like the Nature Conservancy. \"We have a strong feeling,\" explains the husband, \"that privacy and space will be the most scarce commodity in the world over the next 100 years. That's central in our minds.\""^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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