An Aspen House Hides in Plain Sight Robert Reck for The New York Times Chad and Ilona Oppenheim's bedroom on the top level of the house is furnished simply, with a Fabricius & Kastholm Grasshopper Chair from the late 1960s ($15,500 to the trade, from JF Chen). CHAD OPPENHEIM grew up in New Jersey. But the Christmas he was 15, his parents took him and his sister skiing in Colorado, and that was it - he was smitten. The first night was cold and clear, and as they walked the streets of Aspen, he gazed longingly at nearby Red Mountain, sparsely dotted with homes decorated with holiday lights. "In the winter, the trees have no leaves and you can see all the lights," said Mr. Oppenheim, who is now 41 and an architect in Miami. These amazing, incredible lights. One day, he promised himself, he would own a house there. It took a while, but in 2008 he finally made good on his promise. The house he bought for $3 million was a 3,200-square-foot structure built in 1971, sitting on a quarter acre of land with a stream running through it. Although it is not unusual for homes here to be much larger - one nearby house, which sold for $43 million in 2009, is upward of 21,000 square feet - Mr. Oppenheim's goal in renovating his was not to make it more imposing. In fact, he said, "I wanted the house to disappear." Instead of trying to compete with the beauty of the natural landscape, Mr. Oppenheim created a house that recedes into it, with 300-year-old recycled barn wood and locally quarried stone cladding and enormous picture windows. Even inside, he said, "I like invisible doors, fixtures, door openings and drains." So the doors, which are unframed, disappear into the walls. Doorknobs are narrow bronze strips, known as "knife-edge pulls," which disappear into the doors. Light switches are even more minimal, with tiny green and red pinpoints of light that indicate whether they are on or off, and bathroom drains are narrow slits edging the bottoms of the sinks. The minimalist renovation, which cost $2 million, was completed earlier this year, and Mr. Oppenheim and his wife, Ilona, a graphic designer who is now 35, and their children, Hendrix and Liloo, now 3 years old and 11 months respectively, moved into the four-bedroom house. Although it is actually five stories, it looks more like three. But most of the floors are split-levels, which creates a sense of intimacy, and some of the windows are as tall as 14 feet, offering views of the mountains, the stream, the garden and one particular bear that visits frequently for the nuts and berries that grow there. Like the architecture, the furnishings are intentionally low-key. The palette is neutral: mostly gray, taupe, black and white - shades that don't compete with the brilliant colors of the landscape. In the summer, the sofas in the third-floor living area wear white slipcovers; in the winter, the slipcovers are gray. The Oppenheims spend a month here in the summer and three weeks in the winter. On a recent evening, Mrs. Oppenheim served homemade bread and pâté to the adults on the terrace, and homemade baby food to Liloo. "I started making everything, starting with baby cereal, when Hendrix was born," said Mrs. Oppenheim, who grew up in Switzerland, the daughter of Armin Mattli, the founder of La Prairie Cosmetics, and met her husband at a dinner party in Miami when she was 19. Hendrix contented himself with painting nearby, as paragliders drifted above. When it was time to move indoors, Mr. Oppenheim carefully swept up the crumbs on the table, to avoid attracting bears. And dinner was served by candlelight at the long wooden dining table, which sits under what looks like a six-foot abstract painting. A visitor couldn't help noticing that it was actually made of moss - a work of art that's soft to the touch. Which isn't so strange, after all, in a house where the landscape comes first. As Mr. Oppenheim observed, if you can make the house disappear, then you can focus on what really matters. "All that's left is nature," he said, and "many intimate moments."