Modern West | Hardcover

The American West has spent a very long time developing a look. Apparently nobody said it had to stop there.

Modern West explores fifteen remarkable homes across Park City, Big Sky, Jackson, West Yellowstone, Sun Valley, Santa Fe, and other corners of the West where contemporary architecture has learned to live surprisingly well with mountains, desert, timber, and several centuries of visual baggage. Writer Chase Reynolds Ewald and photographer Audrey Hall look at homes that borrow from traditional Western materials and ideas without getting trapped inside them:  log houses opened to light, modernist spaces built around mountain views, and rooms where wood, stucco, stone, steel, and rusted metal feel more connected to the landscape than any strategically placed wagon wheel ever could.

Across 224 generously illustrated pages, the houses vary considerably in size and style, but share an interest in place, material, light, and the idea that building in the West should probably involve paying attention to the West.

The Details

• Hardcover
• Written by Chase Reynolds Ewald
• Photography by Audrey Hall
• Features 15 modern homes throughout the American West
• Locations include Park City, Big Sky, Jackson, West Yellowstone, Sun Valley + Santa Fe
• Architecture, interiors + Western design
• Fully illustrated
• 224 pages
• Approx. 12.22" × 10.26"
• Published September 23, 2025

About the Author + Photographer:  Chase Reynolds Ewald + Audrey Hall

Chase Reynolds Ewald and Audrey Hall have spent a lot of time looking at the American West, which may be why neither seems particularly interested in reducing it to cowboy hats and log cabins.

Ewald has been writing about Western art, architecture, design, food, travel, and craftsmanship for more than 25 years. A graduate of Yale and U.C. Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism, she has written extensively about the places, people, and traditions that shape the West, with a particular interest in what happens when those traditions meet contemporary life.

Hall approaches much of the same territory with a camera. A visual artist and photographer with a fine arts background, she studied photography at the Glasgow School of Art and is known for evocative images of landscapes, architecture, interiors, and the wild places of the American West.

Modern West is their seventh book together, continuing a collaboration that has explored everything from rustic architecture to the American bison. Ewald tells you why a place matters. Hall makes a fairly convincing argument that you should stop reading for a minute and look at it.