Après Ski Chalet, Anyone?
When thinking about my favorite part of skiing (the part right after), I dream of snuggling under a blanket by the fireplace watching the snow gently cascade down as seen through the frosted windows of a classic A-Frame chalet somewhere in the Alps or the Rockies. We pop open an exquisite bottle of 1977 Barros Colheita Tawny Port paired with sea salted dark chocolate, an old Billie Holiday record is playing on the turntable through a Heinsenfolg speaker, and I’ve got my love to keep me warm.
An idea for the “Ski Chalet” speaker design bubbled up after a wonderful conversation with a truly gifted photographer I met this past weekend, Tim Zandee. We were chatting about one of his galleries in Steamboat Springs— one of my all time favorite ski + summer towns in Colorado. I showed him a couple of our latest Mid-Century Modern designs, but then quickly started to imagine something that spoke to the Alpen lifestyle of Zermatt, Chamonix and St. Moritz. I envisioned an alpine A-Frame with its steep roof pitch perfectly adept to shed deep champagne powder, and its relatively small footprint cozily nestled in groves of mountain aspen & lodgepole pine.
A-frame buildings are an old form of structure primarily known in Europe, China, and the South Pacific islands. Used for utilitarian purposes until the 1950s, their popularity surged around the world through the 1970s. Due to the adaptability of the structure itself, the A-Frame enabled architects to experiment with more modern designs in a relatively simple & inexpensive form factor. Additionally, many people in the ‘70s preferred the idea of a "modern-style" vacation home to that of a "modern-style" primary home. Even today, an idyllic mountain A-Frame is a dreamy place for anyone’s ski in/ski out vacation— and of course, a perfect cabinet shape for a 2-way tweeter|woofer amplified living room speaker.
