In Las Vegas, Blue Heron is known for its high quality, eye-catching designs. That summer, the company sold its most expensive home ever, Vegas Modern 001 (and the most expensive one sold in Las Vegas at press time). We recently spoke to founder Tyler Jones about the company and building the house.
Your family has been in Vegas for a very, very long time. Blue Heron has only been around since 2004. What was your motivation for founding the company?
I grew up with my father’s (house building) company … and eventually went to the University of Colorado School of Architecture at Boulder. By the time I was 25 when we founded the company, I had already gained quite a bit of engineering and construction experience. Blue Heron was a way to put everything together to develop a process and workflow for our customers and our team. It was more efficient and always revolved around that ultra-powerful architectural vision.
Many Blue Heron architectures have a (particularly) contemporary flair. Why do you like this type of style?
Our Vegas Modern Design philosophy is about being authentic to the culture and what people living in Las Vegas in 2021 need and want in their homes. It is also about what is appropriate to build in the desert with modern technologies and modern skills. It really is a sensible approach, and it’s beautiful too. There are no rules about the type of design we do, which is very important to us because we like to push boundaries and keep evolving.
The Vegas Modern 001 house was recently sold; it’s incredibly beautiful. What were you most proud of in this house?
The cohesive nature of the design. You can really tell that it was done by the same team with a perfectly matched vision and we didn’t compromise on it as we went all the way through a very complicated and expensive and difficult design and build process. This requires an incredibly talented team and, from a company perspective, a special structure to orchestrate a large group of experts from different disciplines.
It was the most expensive house ever sold in Las Vegas. What do you think contributed to the quick sale?
Well, I had the opportunity to meet the buyer in person. And he realized that this was truly a masterpiece, and what the Blue Heron team did at Vegas Modern 001 is not otherwise available in Las Vegas. There is nothing else out there designed and executed at the same level.
When you think about the future of Las Vegas and home building, where do you think it will go from here?
I just don’t think there is a limit to what can happen in Las Vegas. As a city, we are still in our infancy. I think technology is moving very fast these days. So what is possible in terms of the design and construction of houses changes from month to month. This is very exciting for us because we like to stay up to date with the latest developments in building science and design. And the modern lifestyle is developing faster than ever. Part of the fun of what we do is constantly adapting and evolving to meet those needs. We’re just getting started with Vegas Modern 002. That will be our next step (and) our research and development.
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