Winged Exploration: Best Custom Home

Gold Winner: Wings in the Woods, Castle Pines Village, Colo.

The large, well-appointed kitchen opens to the dining and outdoor room and is perfectly suited to entertaining. Photo: Jacob Sharp Photography

“There is clearly a movement away from what we call reproductive housing, trying to be like an old castle or old world,” says Woodley, principal of Woodley Architectural Group. “We wanted something that reflects the design of today.”

The client already had something in mind, but Woodley asked if he could try something different.

“I was flying back from California,” says Woodley, “and I had this thing in my head. I had some tissue with me and did a little scribble of what the back of the house could be.”

The house he envisioned had three roof planes. Woodley wanted them to reach up to the sky with the surrounding pine trees to “lift up and celebrate the way the trees feel and the way [the house] sits into this hillside.”

Wings in the Woods has three planed roof lines that define an outdoor room, the main great room and the master bedroom. Photo: Jacob Sharp Photography

“These three tilted planes needed to define those key spaces in the house,” he says. “They tie in to the roof at an odd kind of an angle. That was the most interesting thing to try to visualize and then actually document how to build it. That was fun. We like those kinds of challenges.”