Brilliant and Resilient: The Panorama Idea Home
The Panorama Idea Home in Breckenridge, Colo., is a master class in merging beautiful design, indoor comfort, and aggressive sustainability goals in an unforgiving climate
By Andrew Hunt and Rich Binsacca
As you approach from the modest road that leads to an enclave of second homes in the resort town of Breckenridge, Colo., it’s clear the Panorama Idea Home stands apart from its neighbors. And it does so in more ways than just the home’s bright white board-and-batten siding and slightly jagged form that traverses the long, flat lot.
Whatever you call it from the outside (builder Gene Myers refers to it as a "Modern Mountain Farmhouse"), and even once you experience the well-scaled, light-filled, and imminently comfortable interior of this 6,600-square-foot home, Panorama has other names that are equally apt: net-zero, carbon-neutral, all-electric, fire-resilient, drought-tolerant, and healthy all apply, and these performance goals have been accomplished in a climate zone primarily found in Alaska, arguably the country’s harshest environment.
“If we can build to those standards here,” Myers says, “it can be done anywhere.”
Though truly a custom home and passion project for Myers and his team at Thrive Home Builders, a Denver-based production shop, the 6,600-square-foot, single-level house is also a model, Myers says, for production builders to follow.
"It is increasingly necessary to both sustain the built environment and to provide mid-size and small-volume builders with an increasingly marketable selling point that gives them an edge over national and large regional competitors," he says.
But performance is only half of the picture at Panorama. The flip side is the home’s appeal, both visually and, perhaps more importantly, how the home feels.
“One of our primary goals was to design spaces that are not only respectful of the environment and its surroundings but of the inhabitants, too,” says Sydney Piwowar, design director at TRIO, Panorama’s interior designer. “When we can harness that insight, we’re able to tap into a subconscious level of everyday living so the house is working symbiotically with nature and with their lives."
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