Tour a Modern Lake Tahoe Home That Lets the Outdoors In | Architectural Digest

As the CEO of Five9, a publicly traded cloud software company, Rowan Trollope knows a thing or two about technology. Considering his role creating cutting edge technologies, one might believe that his new Lake Tahoe home would look like something out of The Jetsons. But if cartoon analogies are to be made, the 50-year-old entrepreneur’s home—which features slabs of stone floors and wood ceilings—would fit more seamlessly into an episode of The Flintstones. “In general, we really stayed away from technology in the house,” Trollope admits. Instead, he and his wife Stephanie along with their two young children (their third is out of the house), sought to create a space that blurred the line between indoor and outdoor living. “We wanted our home to not be on the land, but of it,” Trollope continues, “which is why it’s partially built into a slope in the ground.”

Located in Truckee, California (roughly ten miles from Lake Tahoe), the one-acre property was purchased by the Trollopes in 2018. By March of 2020, construction was complete, allowing the family to temporarily move out of their primary San Francisco residence and into the house just as the pandemic hit. “The new home became our sanctuary during the pandemic,” Trollope says. “It has that feel of being quite isolated, which I like because my daily life is typically filled with people, meetings, noise. But this house was designed to be the opposite of that in every way.” In order to fit their utopian vision, Trollope tapped the California-based firm Faulkner Architects. “There is minimal difference in material deployment inside and out [of the home],” explains the firm’s founder Greg Faulkner. “I wanted to evoke feelings of a backcountry trip, the spirit of escape and discovery that rises upon arrival of somewhere uniquely special. These feelings are crucial in connecting with a space.”

If connecting with the space was important, then that meant that finding the right interior designer was paramount. That’s why Trollope brought in the San Francisco–based designer Nicole Hollis. The two previously worked together on Trollope’s other home, creating a real friendship in the process. “Not only did we become very good friends, but our kids did, too,” Hollis says. “He’s a CEO of a massive company, and I’m an interior designer. We live in two different worlds, but our backgrounds are what really bonded us.” Trollope shares, “Nicole and I have a sense of being self-made.” He, as Hollis, worked his way up after not graduating college. “But it wasn’t just our common backstory, I very much have fallen in love with architecture and interior design through Nicole’s eye.”

“For anyone who steps foot in the home, they would immediately sense that a lot of inspiration came from Donald Judd,” Hollis says, referring to the sleek minimalism prevalent throughout the space. But it was evident the team—and the homeowners—pushed for more than just a Judd-like ambiance. “The home is built around a central courtyard that’s partially covered by a cantilevered roof,” Hollis explains. “Since all four windows surround the interior courtyard, the fire [from the fire pit] illuminates the whole house as if it were a camping site.”

As much as the home was about escaping the pressures of urban life, it was also about creating formative memories in the new environment. “We were really keen on spending more time with the kids and getting them excited about the outdoors,” Trollope says. “We’re within walking distance of the ski lifts, and can ski in and out of the home. We can go fishing, hiking, or off-roading. I think it’s so important for the kids to experience nature, and for me and Stephanie to be around them while they’re exploring the beauty of the natural world.”

As with their home in San Francisco, Trollope and his family have fallen in love with their Truckee abode. “When I look around the space, there’s stone floors, concrete walls, it all appears very industrial,” Trollope says. “But then the kids come racing in from the outdoors covered in snow, the dog is jumping up and down, mud is going everywhere, and it’s all so beautiful. Nicole used these natural materials to make it feel so robust, so livable.”