Vail Valley Home Magazine
Sustainable, Experiential Architecture
About this article
Vail Valley Home, August 2025 · Written by Katie Coakley
Vail Valley Home profiles the Pete and Pat Frechette Educator Community Housing at Walking Mountains Science Center in Avon, designed by Sipes Architects and led by founding principal Brian Sipes, who also designed the original campus. Early plans for two four-bedroom units grew into three buildings with six bedrooms each, 18 bedrooms in all, built on site rather than from prefabricated modules. One unit is fully ADA accessible. The buildings are net-zero energy: since construction they have had no energy bill and produce more energy each year than they use. The article credits T-stud wall framing that reduces thermal bridging, better-than-code windows, asymmetric roofs sized for solar panels and all-electric systems. Battery storage added with Holy Cross Energy links the buildings in a microgrid. A fourth building was rejected because it would have meant cutting mature cottonwoods along the riparian corridor.
“The green aspects — they were never even in question.”
— Brian Sipes
Published in Vail Valley Home. Related project: Walking Mountains Educator Housing. The full article appears below.
Walking Mountains’ Pete and Pat Frechette Educator Community Housing: a new model for sustainable living
