necessities
Trade name: Rene Del Gaudio’s architecture
Main: Rene Del Gaudio
Headquarters: 5595 Sunshine Canyon Dr, Boulder, Colorado
praise: Forbes Architecture’s America’s Top 200 Residential Architects, 2025. Forbes Architecture’s America’s Best State Residential Architect, 2025.
House name: Betasso Observation Deck
position: Boulder, Colorado
Site details: Just 1.6 miles from the trailhead in the 1,100-acre Betasso Preserve, Sugarloaf is a 1-acre rugged ponderosa pine ecosystem featuring meadows and expansive views. Elevation 6,636 feet. Annual snowfall is 79 inches.
Area and layout: 3,673 square feet, 2 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms; office; studio; mudroom. laundry room. carport
“Architecture is the language of intervention…Because it intervenes in biological, social, and political systems, architects become builder of ideas.”
—Elizabeth Wright Ingraham (1922–2013), Colorado Architect
aAre you there already? Beyond the actions of the torch bearers among us, have we finally pivoted away from a purely egocentric mindset in favor of an ecocentric one, and how we view and value home? From a focus on self-interest, focused on status and investment, to a place that is somehow closer to, dare I say it, representing the greater good? State-to-state initiatives forbes Architectural listings suggest that’s actually happening on the scale of architect-designed custom homes. Beyond the beneficial requirements of building codes, it is no longer possible to overlook the relationship between architecture and sense of place, a renewed focus on new regionalism. As a badge of honor, this development has quietly overtaken “sustainability” with decades of exhausted rhetoric, but not too soon. Just don’t let the naysayers know that regionalism and sustainability are essentially the same thing. For now, we can celebrate. teeth By following the advice in Thoreau’s famous essay “Walking,” you will get a critical mass of getting there. His famous essays evoke a lifelong curiosity that awaits those who dedicate themselves to learning the nuances of local terrain, even within a 10-mile radius of their home.
Above: The 1-acre property takes its name from the Betasso Preserve, a 1,100-acre prime biking and hiking preserve it overlooks.
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Dedicated to this path of excavation, and even more evidence of our progress, is architect Rene Del Gaudio of Boulder, Colorado. In 2011, she started a one-woman shop specializing in site-specific residential construction, and is known for the limited number of projects she is able to handle each year on her own. Her approach is a commitment to quality control and, ultimately, a deeper level of holistic engagement with clients, sites, and the design and construction process, an approach born out of facing deep personal loss.
Del Gaudio had first-hand experience with the 2010 Four Mile Canyon Fire in Boulder. The fire burned 6,181 acres and destroyed 169 homes, including her cabin. For the architect, the fire posed an existential crisis and, amidst the lingering smoke and ashes, became an exercise in soul-searching and exploration of what was fundamentally needed architecturally in the area. This led her to quit her job at a prestigious, award-winning architecture firm in Denver and strike out on her own to begin providing exactly what she determined the post-fire community environment needed. As part of rethinking her overall creative outlook, she found herself looking back to the past to find the right path forward, both materially and formally. In the humble building materials and simple construction methods of the region’s metal-clad miner’s huts from 100 years ago, structures built at a time when the only thing left to do was keep the fire burning, del Gaudio discovered a truth. These discoveries were combined with her foundational understanding and appreciation of the importance of “architecture of place” (she received her master’s degree in architecture from the University of Washington, an architecture school with one of the richest regionalist modernist traditions in the United States). That set the tone for her future work. Del Gaudio defined the basic elements of the new architecture, starting with a complete rebuild of herself, an expanded house studio where she and her family would eventually live and work (and still do). Many awards of excellence were soon awarded and new committees were formed.
Corrugated metal was ultimately chosen for the roof and exterior wall cladding. This decision was born out of the need to increase fire resistance. Above: Main entrance. The dark metal of the envelope draws attention to the grain and Douglas fir beams of the hemlock-covered soffit.
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“Ask yourself how you want your space to feel, not how it looks,” Del Gaudio advises clients who are new to the process of working with an architect. “Avoid looking at past images too early in the process. Once you or your architect have burned the images into your head, the creative process is over.” Above: Living area with soaring 3-inch x 12-inch Douglas fir twins.
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Fourteen years later, Del Gaudio recently completed his Betasso Overlook home, just 18 miles from his home and studio. The new home built for a Chicago immigrant with a design background is exemplary in how nearly every element of her evolved character is revealed.
The home’s main architectural feature is its folded A-frame-like shape with a metal roof. It’s multiple because the plan is divided into three different volumes: work, life, and sleep. Each volume rests on its own concrete pad, clearly positioned along the slope of the site, and interconnected by a glazed exterior corridor. As in all of Del Gaudio’s work, wood is used prominently for its visceral impact, all of it treated naturally and boldly, with precise details. As a rule, the structure is accurately represented and exposed (in a world full of things that are anonymously manufactured abroad, exposed structure architecture allows you to see how the house is actually put together piece by piece, which greatly deepens your connection with the house). But perhaps most impressively, Del Gaudio actively promotes movement by moving circulation outwards, much like an architect. between The spaces encourage the discovery of how the house relates to prevailing winds, sun, landscape features and views, each telling the unique story of the place.
Above: The entrance to the glass hall that connects the bedroom volume with the living/dining/kitchen volume highlights Del Gaudio’s attention to detail in the architectural components. As with the entire house, the Douglas fir composite was meticulously secured using precisely placed carbon steel bolts with a black oxide finish.
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After all, the Betasso Overlook is the latest example of Del Gaudio’s signature response to a certain core, site-specific question that he routinely strives to answer, a question that every work of residential architecture should ostensibly address but too often does not: Does architecture “give back” to the landscape as much or more than it takes from it? Are you aware of landscape traditions (floods, extreme cold or heat, wind, wildfires)? Does it predict how people’s use of their homes will inevitably evolve over time? Does it foster a deeper level of engagement with the place? Surely it does.
Above: Taking full advantage of Boulder’s nearly 300 days of sunshine, the living, dining, and kitchen areas with poured concrete floors are designed to easily expand to a patio or deck facing the nature preserve. Many of the light fixtures on display were designed by Del Gaudio and manufactured by the client, who is an expert in vintage lighting.
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“I want my work to belong there,” Del Gaudio says. “We create architecture until we can’t imagine it anywhere else but in that particular place. Only then do we feel we’ve succeeded in creating something authentic.” Above: In the living/dining area, structure and nature are seamlessly integrated. Sliding doors are made of fiberglass frames with aluminum cladding, similar to the windows in your home.
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Above: The kitchen emphasizes Del Gaudio’s typical emphasis on the deft simplicity of spatial organization and the master master’s honesty and clarity of materials and structure. The cabinetry is white oak and the countertop is precast concrete, while the island has a quartzite countertop and white oak with an ebony stain.
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Above: The floors in the master bedroom are finished in white oak, and the ceiling is finished in hemlock, as is the case throughout the house.
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Above: Master bath. It also features quartzite countertops and backsplashes.
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Above: Front view of the bedroom volume. Off the cedar deck is a workspace, and to the left is a glass hallway that connects the bedroom with the home’s public spaces.
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Energy-wise, the home is equipped with a geothermal system, a 9kW solar array, and is all-electric for zero-carbon performance. Above: The interior glows under the twilight western sky.
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Rene Del Gaudio’s architecture
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