property
Montalba Architects: Luxury, Wood and Panoramas, Discovery of a modern chalet in Switzerland
Facing the Swiss mountains, a chalet reinvents the very idea of alpine vacation. Neither folk pastiche nor demonstrative opulence: this secondary house, imagined by Montalba architects, embodies a contemporary vision of shelter, discreet and sculptural, like the silent luxury that it embraces.
The purity and the stone: a contemporary chalet, soul refuge in the Swiss Alps
Thought for a Geneva couple in search of balance between nature and architecture, this residence dialogues with its environment. Inspired by rural barns and buildings blackened by time, it takes up the vernacular codes – Mélèze slats, floating roof – without ever giving in to the regional anecdote. Wood, here tinged with deep black, becomes graphic writing; The openings, hidden, envelop the gaze of a cozy mystery.
“We wanted to simplify something complex,” says David Montalba, founder of the studio. “Create an object more than a house, a mineral presence on the slope, between rock and sky. »»
The geometric volumes piled gracefully, almost abstract to twilight. By day, the light infiltrates by the panoramic canopies, erasing the boundaries between interior and landscape. The gaze then slides from the prosecution in clear oak with distant pine forests, in the same breath.
The chalet plan is voluntarily modest – 200 m² – but generous in its fluidity. A warm living room, a peaceful bedroom, a studio below, and, in the heart, the fireplace, anchor of everyday life and sweet winters. Comfort here is whispering: local woods, natural granite, sleek furniture, materials that tell without chatting. The art of detail is expressed with restraint, in the accuracy of a Roset line sofa or the shade of a smoked oak ceiling.
“I like the idea of silence between the notes,” says the architect. “This suspended space which gives all its strength to music … and habitat. »»
Outside, the roof advances like a visor, protecting the large bay windows of the sun, while the suspended terrace offers a private theater on the valley. Here, experience is almost spiritual. A bathroom carved in black marble recalls the bowels of the mountain. The spa dug on the hillside extends this feeling of refuge, anchoring, mineral intimacy.
Everything, in this house, seems to seek a form of gentle fusion with its environment: lines, textures, native plantations, to the stone paths that wind in silence around the building.
Switzerland of heart, Californian of soul, Montalba injects in this project the essence of a way of life which erases the thresholds: inside and outside, matter and light, protection and opening. An art of living without emphasis, where every detail – even invisible – becomes essential. And in the suspended calm of this contemporary refuge, something essential reappears: the luxury of a silence, a mountain, a moment.
