Seclusion is a given. After a 10-minute drive through a gated forest of lodgepole pines, a valet struck a triangle iron bell to welcome me "home." I was escorted to a leather club chair beside a dark steel fireplace and offered a warm towel and a huckleberry-flavored mocktail. An expansive wall of glass framed Lone Mountain, the iconic centerpiece of Big Sky.
Prospect and refuge: These two themes have long guided the work of Tom Kundig. Siting houses in some of America's most breathtaking but also rugged terrains, the AD100 architect takes care to create a deep sense of shelter-nestling buildings into hillsides, even blasting into rock-and engineer awe through sweeping vistas and intimate connections to nature. "Architecture is not the center of the world," he has often said. "It's the landscape that's the center of the world for me."