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Western Window Systems

Natural Meets Theatrical in a Las Vegas Modern Marvel

From disappearing walls to indoor-outdoor water features, Blue Heron’s Las Vegas Modern 001 is a showpiece of clever design and ingenuity.

When Blue Heron’s Founder and CEO Tyler Jones set his sights on the 1.26 acre lot in Las Vegas’s affluent MacDonald Highlands community, he knew it was the ideal place to bring something special to the city. Set against the mountains with a view of the Las Vegas strip, the site had the perfect vantage point for a spectacular vista.

Categories

  • Residential

Products

  • Classic Line
  • Series 600
  • Multi-Slide Door

Location

  • Las Vegas, Nevada
A view from the back of the three-story house with large multi-slide doors overlooking the gravel landscaping in the backyard.

VM001 boasts numerous multi-slide glass doors facing the backyard that are nearly all automated to open with a touch of a button.

A Las Vegas native, Jones sought to merge the area’s vast landscape with trend-setting innovation and technology in Vegas Modern 001, or VM001 for short — the culmination of his vision for an aesthetic that’s both inspired by and for this unique desert playground. Sold for $25 million in June 2021 to LoanDepot founder Anthony Hsieh, it set a new record for the most expensive home sold in Las Vegas. It also set a new style standard for the city, one that Jones coins Vegas Modern in an ethos that brings the natural and human-made worlds together in a way only Las Vegas can inspire.

An interplay of the natural and theatrical

VM001 marks the arrival of a refreshed and modern style for Las Vegas residential design. The home is uniquely suited to its time and place in a city that’s emblematic of iconic desert living and on the cutting edge of what’s possible in innovation and technology. Jones sought to harmonize both under one roof, blending the natural and human-made by bringing in local stone and flora, and playing with natural light and shadow.

The automated multi-slide doors in the foyer dramatically display the Vegas skyline when both open and closed.

A view from the sidewalk looking into a room with an open, wall-to-ceiling pocketed multi-slide door.

This Classic Series, pocketing multi-slide door seamlessly connect rooms to the outdoor walkways and landscaping. 

“As you move through the different spaces in VM001, we want you to be inspired, and we want the space and the forms and the architecture and the design to really speak to you at a fundamental level,” he says.

The home’s relationship between forms, materials and natural elements – a cornerstone of biophilic design – guided Jones’ philosophy. “We’ve brought plants from the outside to the inside. The water elements are always surrounding you, and there’s deliberate use of organic materials — these are things that you can relate to as a person, and kind of it feels natural.”

The home office encased in glass with an open sliding door leading to the walkway.

Walls of glass surround this home office, providing beautiful views of the surrounding pools and letting in natural light. 

Jones and the Blue Heron team incorporated warm-toned metaquartzite from the Mojave Desert and collaborated with local artisans on milling and construction. They brought in cactus, succulents, and other native greenery to align walkways with other locally sourced rock and stone. An L-shaped floor plan employs classic passive design features, placing the home’s primary living areas to face northwest to take advantage of city views, while bedrooms occupy the rear to reduce afternoon solar gain.

Full transparency

It’s an understatement to say that VM001 takes full advantage of the outdoors. The home’s western façade is made up of nearly all glass, removing visual barriers between inside and outside, and physical barriers when most of the glass walls, featuring Western Window Systems Series 600 Multi-Slide Doors, retract into pockets, turning the main living areas into open air pavilions. Water features flow outside and within the home, and the desert landscaping and décor blurs the line between spaces. The scale of the moving glass walls, the technical requirements created by mountain wind forces, and the seamless blending of indoor and outdoor spaces made the project incredibly complex.

“We chose Western Window Systems because we just have a comfort level that they have the competency to figure out some of the technical specifics in a complicated home like this,” says Jones. “They have everything we need to execute and actually bring something at this level together and make it look beautiful like it does today.”

 

The automated multi-slide glass doors span both levels of the home’s main atrium, offering high drama that makes an even higher impact as the living room achieves an ethereal quality. With 90-degree openings that allow multiple glass walls to retract into hidden pockets, the rooms seem to merge with surrounding pools of water that connect the shared and private living spaces. When the sky’s full of saturated hues of red and orange at sunset, the home has a feel of becoming one with the elements — fire, water, earth, and air.

The two levels of automated glass walls in the atrium that overlook the pool allow for a unique variety of opened and closed configurations.

A large, wall-to-ceiling closed multi-slide door gives views of interior lighting and the second floor of the home.

This multi-slide door spans an entire wall, providing views of the home’s interior layout. 

Technology has the unique ability to enhance light, shadow and sound, and Jones leveraged everything at his disposal for maximum effect. “We like to think about the home as being appropriate to our time and place, our culture and the technology that’s available,” says Jones. “And so there’s an energy and spirit that comes from the city … so we’re talking about digital media and this playful kind of vibe that we have in some big dramatic moments.”

A view of the foyer with open multi-slide doors that connects the room to the desert landscaping and pools around the entrance.

The foyer sidewalk surrounded by pools of water completely opens when the multi-slide doors are open, erasing nearly every barrier between inside and outside. 

From the water-lined front entry that delivers an expansive view of the Las Vegas strip to the moving glass walls that merge indoors with outdoors, VM001 achieves that drama and so much more. The design and technological innovations make a showcase for what’s possible in indoor-outdoor living.

Architect/Developer Tyler Jones, Blue Heron

Photographer James Lee, Lee Media

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Western Window Systems designs and manufactures moving glass walls and windows that bring indoor and outdoor spaces together.

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Phoenix, AZ 85034
877-398-9643

Address

2866 Colorado Avenue
Santa Monica, California 90404
1-877-398-9643

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