Luxury residential design: A home with a moat

By Ty Monks 

The Big Timber Riverside Residence is one of the most unique, luxurious, and modern residences in Montana. This private residence’s captivating artistic design and structure was featured in an issue of Mountain Living magazine.  

IMEG provided structural engineering and design services for this 3,800-sf single-family home on a 2,000-acre ranch in southwest Montana. Structural systems and primary components of the building consist of steel frame cantilevered column design, concrete foundation, metal roofing, native planted sod roof, re-adapted barn siding, Ipe decking, locally quarried limestone floors, Duratherm mahogany windows, geothermal heating and cooling, LED light fixtures, and a Bulthaup kitchen. One of the structural challenges was installing the fireplace at the intersection of the main floor’s two axes. The fireplace hood hangs from the ceiling to make the fire accessible from all four sides. 

Our team collaborated with Hughes Umbanhowar Architects, general contractor Highline Partners, and various design consultants outside Montana. Because the building site is in a flood plain, the architects devised a creative solution—a building that sits on a 30-inch-tall porous plinth elevating the finished floors. The house presents two distinct and separate facades on arrival, revealing itself after the visitor enters as two interlocking objects – a two-level glass wedge and a one-story wooden bar. Joined together, these interlocking objects form a “T” shape. A glass-enclosed hall along the western side of the residence adds to the width of the wooden structure and recalls the scale and function of the covered walkways in former frontier towns.  

Read the IMEG case study here. 

PHOTO CREDIT:  Gibeon Photography