Most of us dream of one day owning a home of our very own. For designers, it can sometimes be a dream to design that home, too. Now, one Utah-based architect has gone so far as to design and build a house for himself.

Chris Price owns Park City Design + Build, a design and construction company that ?focuses on the intersection of architecture, landscape, energy performance, and happy places.” The company takes its clients through the entire design process from start to finish, helping them realize their dream homes at every step of the way. Park City’s methods and values can even be found in the house that Price built for himself: the aptly-named “TreeHaus.”

The TreeHaus is a site-specific structure that directly responds to its environment. Sited on a hill, it was designed to work with the existing contours of the land in such a way as to be staggered in stepped tiers that worked their way down the slope in an angular fashion. This arrangement was achieved by a shifting the orientation of each terraced volume, all of which sit in a hollow carved out from the hill so as to minimize their impact on the bedrock below. The external walls of these volumes are also retaining walls, which provide stability to both the house and the hill. Officially certified as a passive house, the TreeHaus is fully capable of resisting the extreme climatic conditions in Park City, which, at an elevation of 7,000 feet, receives quite a bit of snow each year. The buildin...