House in the Alps
The house is situated on a steep slope of the Flumserberg alpine community on 1250 m above sea level. The town area of Flums stretches from the lowlands, at 456 m, to the vertiginous height of 2 222 m on the Leistenkamm ridge. Hardly any building lots are left in this touristically highly developed landscape of the northernmost range of the Alps. The lot the house is situated on had been removed from the building zone in the 1970s, because a neighboring building took up its utilization factor. After a zoning revision, it was once again approved for building, if only on a small surface area of about ninety square meters.
The house is positioned on a tapered lot in a bend of a small serpentine road. The compact volume with its nearly square layout of 8.01 × 8.56 m leaves the apex of the lot open and rests — being an all-wood structure — on a recessed concrete plinth. A cantilevered element forms an open carport as well as a sheltered space for chopping wood or other work. Two residential stories practically hover over the slope and possess a multifaceted spatial interior despite the dwelling’s modest dimensions. In between four bedrooms, the entrance space flows into the open living-cum-dining space under a gently angled gable roof.
The two panorama windows in the main room, which extend around the corners, look out on the peaks of the Churfirsten range to the north and the seven peaks of the Alvier range to the northeast. The framed views of cloud and rock formations between névé patches and the edge of the forest in the morning and evening light lend the house a kind of scenic suspense apart from its interior arrangement.
The extensive wooden paneling of the interior intensifies this effect: because of the slow growth of Alpine flora and through a careful choice of material, the white fir wood is practically free of knotholes. The pre-built post-and-beam construction has been fitted with carefully planed white fir panels on all interior surfaces and fixtures, thus contrasting the forested, rugged slopes of the Alps with a precisely composed interior of surprising simplicity inside the wooden cube.
