Vanessa Alexander’s Design for an Aspen House Brings the Marvelous Mountains Indoors
(October 5, 2025) When Vanessa Alexander was 14 years old — the time in a young person’s life when their days are typically dominated by friends, school and all the growing pains associated with being a teenager — she set off on a two-year sailing trip with her parents that took her to exotic ports of call, from Portugal to Morocco to Barbados.
Alexander is the youngest of five, but because eight years separated her from her next oldest sibling, “I had an only-child version of life in a way,” she says. A family tragedy some years prior, which in part prompted the boat excursion, had refocused the family’s priorities. “I got to do a lot of stuff with my parents, because they realized how fleeting things can be and began prioritizing experience.” [...]
Where that strength could have been overwhelming, Alexander reined it in. Such is the case in the great room, which includes an open dining area with a soaring, asymmetrically pitched ceiling from which hangs a counterweighted contemporary brass pendant that masterfully tempers the myriad angles.
Conical, a dyed-and-stitched-hemp piece by Lawrence Calver (one of several artworks in the house curated by Creative Art Partners) provides a stunning backdrop for Pierre Jeanneret chairs placed around a custom walnut dining table set on a vintage African Tuareg mat.
Here, as throughout, Alexander balanced the collectible with the hardy for the couple and their three children, all active and athletic, who can go directly from mountain biking or skiing to the dinner table without worrying about anything being too precious.
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