Boulder artist Jane McMahan and her entrepreneur husband, Ron, knew what they were after when they decided to upsize from a house in town to a contemporary country home.

Space. Lots of it.

"We wanted land," says Jane McMahan, a past president and trustee of the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art. "I wanted animals - a menagerie - and lots of space for our eclectic art collection of paintings, photographs and prints, masks and a ceramics collection . . . Art is all over the house."

The menagerie is as varied as the art at the McMahans' 7,000-square-foot home on five acres in unincorporated Boulder County.

"We have one horse, two donkeys, cats, chickens, geese, ducks and three dogs," says Jane, a contemporary and conceptual artist. "We found this house in the late '90s after looking for several years and decided to renovate it, which has been a work in progress.

"But it had mature trees, a barn, two ponds, a well and a pool. And it's next to a horse arena, where I can ride. When Ron saw it all, he said, 'This is it.' "

The McMahans hired architect Steve Chucovich, a principal with Architecture Denver, to renovate the Southwestern-style home.

"Steve had done some consulting for BMoCa and he knows about contemporary art," Jane says. "Ron and I had renovated two previous homes in Boulder County but had never done anything this extensive, and I wanted an architect I could talk to as an artist."

The result is a home designed to be knitted back into the landscape by a series of garden walls and outdoor terraces. Even the pool has been redone in black so the water reflects the natural terrain. Views to the east, filled with deciduous trees and fields, conjure up images of Jane's Indiana heritage, while to the west the mountains and dry high prairie suit Ron, a Boulder native.

Imbued with light and enormous windows, the house, built by Tom Sprung of Sprung Construction in Denver, features a stunning kitchen, dining and living spaces and entry hall. Upstairs is the master suite and library.

A long wing to the south holds the garage, a media room with pool table, a large space for gatherings, several guest bedrooms, Ron McMahan's office and the laundry room. A transition space between the two sections contains a mudroom and a breakfast room with access to the gardens or driveway.

The McMahans and Chucovich were intent on leaving a footprint and a large chunk of the original house, marrying old and new. "We tore down a round section of the house and left the long wing intact," Chucovich says.

"The original construction was weathering badly, but none of us wanted to rip the house down completely. We reconfigured the wing and interior spaces and built the new pavilion and cut off the flat roof."

The wood-frame construction and a combination of stone and stucco facades, zinc roof with PV panels for solar collection and customized fir windows create what the architect calls a "house for a hundred years."

"It's about old principles; it's how we lived in the old manor houses," Chucovich says. "If you look at landscape and place and consider the way people should live, you design an efficient house."

The McMahan house is as low-tech as possible, he says, designed with major overhangs and made for cross-ventilation through windows and French doors. A boiler provides radiant heat in the pavilion, while the rest of the house has the original forced-air system.

Lighting in the pavilion, some recessed and some track lighting, was selected for the display of art.

An enormous U-shaped kitchen is organized around a 10-foot island.

Even the master bedroom is a simple space. A sliding door separates it from the library.

The tone of the rooms relies on natural materials: the golden hues of wood and the shades of the schist floors in the pavilion, garnered from Colorado and Wyoming quarries. All are materials Jane wanted to reinforce a sense of the outdoors.

For landscape architecture, the McMahans again took a collaborative approach by turning to Karla Dakin, of KDakin Design in Louisville. Dakin, currently designing the rooftop garden for the Museum of Contemporary Art/Denver, worked on the McMahan design for more than a year.

"The property was already amazing, with the ponds and water from the Silver Lake Ditch from the Hayden Reservoir," Dakin says. "Jane and Ron were most concerned with how the house fit into the land. It's not a mountain house, nor is it about evergreens, which we relocated to the back corners of the property near the dog run."

Black concrete and schist were used outdoors as design accents and to define areas. A rustic patio by the upper pond was covered in buff flagstone.

Like the outside, the McMahans' interior provides a natural backdrop.

"Artwork is the only real color," Jane says. "There's so much going on between the variety of materials and the strong architecture that you can't have clutter and you have to keep the furnishings simple."

The layout and size of the house are perfect for the many visiting family members and friends, Jane says, including the couple's grown children and 1-year-old grandson.

"I stood here as the pavilion was being constructed," she says. "I think of windows as picture frames and I was fanatical about window placement; each one has its own little vignette.

"I like to call this an anti-feng shui house, because certain angles such as the stairwell slant down, but it's subtle. I like to be in a space that is a little thought-provoking."

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