Case Study: Luxury Utah Development Designed for Well-Being

Is it possible to engineer a sense of peace? That’s the challenge the development team behind Velvære has set for themselves. 

Velvære is a Park City, UT luxury development, which debuted its first residence in 2024. It’s named for the Norwegian concept of well-being, a way of life the entire community is built to promote and embody. “Velvære” includes not just personal satisfaction, but a sense of connection to nature; the practice of giving back to the community; an embrace of outdoor recreation; and prioritizing coziness or “koselig.”

Cultivating “velvære” means bringing your physical, social, emotional, and spiritual life into balance. This holistic sense of peace and fulfilment is the new luxury. With Velvære in Park City, Bonfire Collective set out to create an intentional community where the built environment exists in harmony with both the natural world and residents’ needs, promoting this balance in every respect. 

The Velvære Vision

Velvære is a 60-acre development adjacent to Park City’s Deer Valley Resort®. Upon completion, it will include 115 private residences, including paired homes, cabins, and sites for private estates. 

Velvære is designed to offer residents an elevated experience that is nonetheless completely connected to the natural world. The 2300-2400 sq. ft. cabins and 3000-5500 sq. ft. paired homes embody the concept of wellness as luxury.  With warm, natural finishes bathed in sunlight from panoramic windows, the homes will feature ski-in/ ski-out access. In an effort to prioritize intentional wellbeing, each residence will feature customizable Synergistic Sanctuary Spaces that transform the concept of a “healthy home.” These in-home sanctuary spaces feature environmentally forward design and amenities, a treatment room (with storage to hold equipment), steam shower, cold/hot plunge, and a HaloIR Sauna. 

Bonfire Collective has a discerning eye for detail born from the company’s shared roots with storied luxury home builder Magleby Construction. They are committed to ensuring that everything from the construction materials to the mechanical systems align with their mission of creating communities for intentional living.

As part of the commitment to “velvære,’ each residence is designed to minimize its carbon footprint and use shared energy resources responsibly. Homes are built with pathways to solar, so that residents may choose to add renewable energy collection and storage with no infrastructure retrofit required. Each home also comes equipped with an energy management system that allows residents to set their priorities and goals for energy usage – part of a “single pane of glass” Crestron home automation system that manages everything from lights and AV to security and safety sensors. Residents can also opt-in to a “time of use” demand response program that will automate certain activities – e.g. running the dishwasher – to occur during times of lowest grid demand.  

Making HVAC Part of the Mission

HVAC system efficiency was naturally crucial to the Velvære’s sustainability goals – but the HVAC system designs for these luxury homes need to achieve more than just efficiency. They need to support the crucial “coziness” element, welcoming residents in from a ski run or a summer hike to an ideal environment. That might mean toasty floors in the winter, a cool living room in the summer, or even different temperatures for different rooms and activities year-round.

It is also critical the HVAC systems avoid adding complexity to overall home management. Bonfire Collective prioritized bringing HVAC control into the Crestron home automation system, unifying home management and preserving a simple, elegant end-user experience.

“Sustainability is only one aspect of our goals for Velvære,” said Chad Magleby, Partner at Bonfire Collective. “It’s part of wellness, which is in turn part of ‘velvære.’ We believe that a specific desire for personal wellness will drive more change than a broad preference for sustainability.” 

Engineered for Coziness

Bonfire Collective contracted Gunther’s Heating, Cooling, and Plumbing to engineer Velvære’s HVAC systems. This family-owned business has served American Fork, UT continuously for over a century; they brought both advanced expertise and a deep connection to the community, central to the project’s mission.

Gunther’s Heating, Cooling and Plumbing designed a system that delivers on the concept of koselig year-round. A natural gas radiant floor system warms the homes in the winter, melting snow from parkas and mittens and warming residents’ toes as they step out of their boots after a black diamond run. Zoned heat pumps control the upper-end of the set point range, allowing residents to maintain a cozy kitchen without allowing home office and master suite spaces on the upper floors to get stuffy. In the summer, the same heat pumps deliver zoned air conditioning throughout the home.

The specifying engineer selected Mitsubishi SMART MULTI Hyper-heating heat pumps for this project. These highly versatile Inverter units offer superior efficiency, and their multi-position design allows Gunther to spec them for any Velvære floorplan. A typical Velvære paired home includes three SMART MULTI units, as well as an AprilAire Humidifier to keep these homes comfortable in the dry Mountain West climate.

Sophistication Meets Simplicity

The engineering team recognized that residents would not want to separately manage radiant and electric heating systems. Indeed, ideally, they should not have to manage the HVAC system at all: temperature and humidity should be orchestrated by the Crestron home automation system without a second thought. To unify operation of the two-stage heating system, manage zoning control, and enable two-way communication between the Crestron home automation system and Mitsubishi Inverter units, the specifying engineer turned to Airzone.

Airzone is a leading provider of intelligent HVAC control solutions, with an exclusive library of HVAC manufacturer protocols. For the homes of Velvære, Gunther’s Heating, Cooling and Plumbing used the Airzone VAF solution. This flexible zoned HVAC system controller supports control of ducted, and ductless systems from major manufacturers. Airzone VAF can control heating, cooling and schedules for multiple zones, allowing the engineers to optimize the comfort of each Velvære home. Uniquely, Airzone allows simultaneous control of a two-stage heating system with both radiant and air from a single thermostat.

Airzone VAF connects directly to the “single pane of glass” Crestron home automation system. Airzone offers a dedicated RESTful API driver for the Crestron Home® OS that allows HVAC controllers to be integrated without custom programming, additional wiring, or WAN connection. 

Via the Airzone controller, the HVAC system becomes part of the holistic home management system. The user only needs to interact with one interface. When the user changes a setpoint, or the home enters an automation such as “eco mode,” or “vacation mode,” the Crestron system communicates to the Airzone controller, which then translates the commands into the requisite manufacturers protocols for the radiant heat system, heat pumps, fans, temperature sensors, etc. The home is managed as a unified whole, in alignment with the spirit of Velvære.

The Velvære Journey Begins

As Velvære welcomes its first residents, Bonfire Collective is offering luxury homeowners a new kind of mindful living. The community is designed to support connection to the natural world as a top priority. Homeowners who wish to carefully manage their carbon footprint can monitor and optimize their energy sources and consumption through the Crestron home automation system. They can also monitor their natural gas consumption specifically via an exclusive pulse device on home meters.

The community’s elegant HVAC and home automation system design is integral to achieving that balance. “Our laboratory testing indicates that properly controlled Inverter HVAC systems offer energy savings of 45% on average compared to traditional units,” said Victoria Garcia Massimo, North America Operations Manager for Airzone. “Zoned systems can achieve energy savings of 60% or more. When an HVAC system is part of a holistic building and energy management system, as in Velvære, these effects are amplified. The more deeply we integrate these systems, the more good we can achieve.”

Bonfire Collective and their partners plan to track the community’s performance. “Our intent on a community scale is to exist in balance with nature,” says Magleby. “As Velvære grows, we plan to monitor aggregate energy consumption and eventually seek ways to offset our fossil fuel usage through the HOA.”

The concept of ‘velvære’ recognizes that well-being requires connection. Integration with IoT systems such as home and building automation is essential to participating in this vision. By designing homes and a community that promotes enjoying and taking care of the natural world, Velvære represents an ambitious path forward for the industry, where HVAC systems are a key element of a better, more connected life.