Four young American entrepreneurs are building a unique, crowdsourced ski resort on Utah’s Powder Mountain with arts and culture at its core.

The collective, called Summit, are overseeing the construction of a new ski village on the site of a mountainside ranch, which will feature restaurants, cafés, artisan stores and artists’ workshops.

The village will also house the headquarters of the Summit Series community – a movement formed by the group which organises workshops “acting as a catalyst for entrepreneurship and global change.”

In an exclusive interview
featured in the latest issue of CLADmag, the group’s design director Sam Arthur explained how they are “subverting” resort culture by building a new type of community which will mix food, entertainment, music, yoga and skiing.

“This is a blank slate to work with and we have a 100-year vision to create a town which is enduring and meaningful,” he said. “People very much believe in the community of Summit; investing in continuing and empowering that community was the logical next step.”

A crowdsourcing campaign has been launched, with members of the Summit community able to pay between $1m (€871,000, £709,000) and $2m (€1.7m, £1.4m) for a one to two acre plot in the village, which will have around 500 homes and several hotels – including a Six Senses resort designed by Chad Oppenheim – for tourists visiting in ski season. Over 100 backers have signed up so far.

“The Summit founders felt like the community would benefit from having a place to invest in long-term, to build its culture,” said Arthur. “This project could have been in New York, on an island, or in a lot of different places; it just so happened that here in northern Utah the founders found a raw, beautiful, up and coming area.

“It’s a place to lean in closer, like gathering around a campfire. It will be an incubator for ideas and friendships and will catalyse goodness in the world.”

Construction on the first 15 residences and some public buildings has already begun.

Arthur said: “The architecture will recede into the landscape, to be part of the bigger whole and the interiors will be vehicles to allow a great experience, to enjoy the view and the sunset. They won’t be too opulent.

“The materials will be humble and earnest and they will be unpretentious, ergonomic and functional. Our goal is to create new mountain architecture, which will be subservient to the natural landscape.”

He added that while many US ski resorts provide hollow experiences “based on prosperity and sprawl,” Summit will be created with “restraint and humbleness”.

“The expectation is that people will come and participate: ski, have a blast, meet people, share stories and be actively involved in making the next part of this place, as it grows and changes.”