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But it is their latest home that introduces a paradoxical revelation. The Youngs’ 1,165-sq.-ft. condo stands among city and mountains—things sweeping North Scottsdale properties observe from afar—and it gets a more immense and more powerful view in doing so.   

The Youngs, however, aren’t ones to brag about this secret. (Or about much else for that matter.) Perhaps that’s because it’s one that they’ve only recently discovered themselves. They’d looked at their Al Beadle-designed building, Executive Towers, some 10 years earlier, although it took as many years and one single-family home before they decided to buy a condo there. By that time, they were ready to indulge in their “midlife crisis stuff,” as Maggie puts it, and downsize. Executive Towers was waiting. 

 “It’s very interesting,” Maggie says, “because there are original residents here who [are] like, ‘Why would we change it? We just did that in 1984!’ And then there’s a whole new group of people who have moved in and are kind of rejuvenating the old building.” It’s safe to say the Youngs belong to the second camp. To look at their condo now (which respects Beadle’s original vision but adds a modern urban feel), it’s hard to believe it once wore parquet floors, white sculpted carpet and more boxed-up rooms than a dollhouse. “It was really compartmentalized, really mazelike,” Woolsey says.

Still, Woolsey is quick to point out that Beadle’s building was appropriate for the 1960’s when it was built. People didn’t entertain in the kitchen back then, she posits; and it was normal and desirable for rooms to be very separate from one another. “It was right for then,” Woolsey says, “but it didn’t take advantage of the views.”     

Woolsey began the redesign process from scratch, finding inspiration in mid-century Modernism instead of the industrial aesthetic the Youngs previously embraced. Every wall came down except for one—it held electrical components that couldn’t be moved—and very few went back up. In fact, the one wall that was erected almost didn’t make it: The Youngs toyed with the idea of leaving the bedroom—the home’s only truly siphoned-off space—open, or separated by something fluid like a curtain. “Finally I said, ‘No. One room. We need one room,’” Maggie recounts.

So instead of a kitchen squirreled away at the back of the house, a formal dining room and living room, two bedrooms and one-and-three-quarters bathrooms, the Youngs’ home now reaches from the office all the way back to the master suite in an uninterrupted stretch. The common objective in all of Woolsey’s projects is the introduction of movement; so in this home, the entry’s dark walls and low ceiling usher you into the great room, which then melts into the kitchen. The office is tucked around the doorless corner, and balconies to the west and north beckon you to keep on walking. (The window walls also flood the rooms with soft, natural light.) On the eastern end resides the master bedroom and bath, the latter being made that much more comfortable with the addition of square footage it purloined from the three-quarters-size guest-bathroom-turned-powder-room.

The guest room was entirely deleted, and the Youngs passed up a dining room in favor of a home office. (One of the transitions to accompany downsizing was Maggie’s foray into self-employment.) But the biggest change occurred in the kitchen-great-room setup. This was perhaps to be expected since cooking is Maggie’s greatest passion, and electronic gadgets are Dennis’s. “The quality of the kitchen experience and the quality of the electronic sound experience were never on the chopping block,” Woolsey says, observing a fact she came to know even better the second time she worked with the Youngs. 

The kitchen now assumes a greater role in the home: One part nestled toward the back functions as prep and cleanup space, while a second area interacts with the great room via an architecturally artistic island. This is a station to cook, serve and eat. The very nature of the island, with its light onyx base and grainy teak counter, invite you to do nothing less, while the prep area is outfitted in darker finishes to recess it and make the overall space feel bigger. The slate product on the prep area’s backsplash embodied the innovation applied to the project as a whole. The product, Txtr-Lite by Interlam, is fashioned from a stone veneer that’s affixed to a backing for versatile application—it can bend or lie flat—that affords the look and feel of slate without the big grout lines or the prohibitive cost. 

With the exceptions of the dark brown entryway and the dark kitchen, the walls of the Youngs’ condo wear bright, airy white. This, Woolsey says, complements the view she famously told the Youngs they purchased. “Between the city and the mountains and the sky, I have a huge amount of color,” she says. “So the white just goes away and starts to frame those amazing views without really distracting from them.” Removing the wall between the two northern balconies also aided this effort. Previously, the guest room and master bedroom had separate balconies overlooking the same view. But when Woolsey and the Youngs removed the—brace yourself—AstroTurf from the balconies, they took that divider with it. “We got twice as much view,” Maggie quips.

Other personal touches—the rock sink in the master bath that Maggie found on eBay, the terrazzo shower walls that riff on the lobby’s terrazzo floors—all unite in a home that retains the essence of the Youngs’ last residence but wears fresh trimmings. “I guess it says that we are ready to embrace this downtown lifestyle,” Maggie says of her new home, “but that we still do it in a casual, comfortable way.”