Aspen Town Residence is a minimal home located in Aspen, Colorado, designed by Clive Lonstein. The designer’s decision to “go low with all of the furniture” reveals an understanding of scale that extends beyond mere proportion. In a room generous enough to overwhelm, Lonstein creates intimacy through restraint, using the horizontal plane as his canvas. The custom tan leather sofa and shearling chairs with brown leather trim form a constellation around the corner fireplace, their earthy tones echoing the geological palette of the surrounding Rockies. This isn’t mere decoration – it’s environmental storytelling, where furniture becomes landscape.

The fireplace itself demonstrates Lonstein’s architectural literacy. By designing it to “architecturally mimic the corner windows,” he creates visual rhyme between interior and exterior, structure and void. This dialogue between solid and transparent, warm and cool, speaks to a deeper understanding of how domestic spaces can both shelter and connect.

Material choices throughout reveal a curator’s eye for authentic craft. The Edward Wormley side table for Dunbar, with its glass top floating above wood, represents mid-century American design at its most refined. Positioned at the sofa’s end, it serves as punctuation in the room’s material sentence. Similarly, the Paul Frankl coffee table in the secondary seating area carries the DNA of California modernism, its clean lines softened by cream tones that prevent visual competition with the room’s darker anchors.

The Jean-Michel Basquiat print “Flexible” introduces controlled chaos into this carefully modulated environment. Lonstein’s placement of this vibrant work adjacent to the shearling chairs creates tension that energizes the space without disrupting its fundamental calm. The artwork’s title seems prophetic – flexibility becomes the project’s organizing principle, allowing 1970s warmth to coexist with contemporary sophistication.

In the dining area, Jean-Michel Frank chairs surrounding a glossy wood table demonstrate how historical reference can feel entirely contemporary. Frank’s 1930s aesthetic, with its emphasis on luxurious simplicity, provides perfect counterpoint to the room’s more casual elements. The custom glass pendant by Michael Davis Glass above creates a jewel-like focal point, its transparency maintaining the room’s connection to natural light.