Driving up the mountains, overlooking a gorgeous scenery of Swiss nature and cute stunningly preserved chalets, you end up in an authentic village of little Devils (Les Diablerets, altitude 1200 m). This new built projet has been conceived to fully reflect the authenticity of the surrounding context combined with the usage of contemporary materials and lighting.
The choice of materials played a great role in this projet. As for wall covering, antique wood helped to create a spirit of mountain habitat. It was recuperated from some ancient dismantled chalets. The proportion of wood panels and ‘enduits à la chaux’ - lime rendered walls - is more or less 50/50. This particular finishing came from around 6000 years ago, and nowadays has become a true ecological solution for the construction industry, providing a great interior comfort. As for bathrooms, the combination of Micromosaic pieces (6x6mm) with contemporary looking black and bronze tiles was used to reinforce the representation of tradition and contemporary trends.
All 3 floors are laid out to give a particular use to each area without any lost space. The ground floor is dedicated to sports, wellness and leisure time. Coming up the stairs and entering the main floor, there’s an all-around chimney architectural volume opening up a glimpse of the living area, serving as a space-defining element to separate the corridor from the rest of the living space. The chimney surrounding structure allows for enlarging the cocktail sitting place, while underneath it there is a generous log storage. On that same floor, there’s a square cut out volume from the inside part into the outside that brings 2 advantages: firstly it enlarges the terrace for a comfortable usage, secondly it delimits the dining area and gives a space of its own to the living area.
Lighting has its own scale of importance. It cohesively exists with all the other elements of the space or else brings a particularly shaped source of light that reinforces the interior concept. In this regard the dining lighting reminds wooden texture, but is made of cardboard. All the spots of the house are pivotal surface mounted dimmable spots, which allows for their flexible utilisation. The ground floor has a different visual entity with large ceramic pieces in spa area (Piazentina stone effect), where windows are framed by extra large pending lights made of recycled plastic cords.
Designed for a family of 4 this house was conceived to welcome friends and family on regular basis. Space optimisation as one of the basic design principals led to the creation of polyvalent rooms like a guest bedroom and a home office in one, divided by a 2,5 m long library that allows for a fine separation in-between the two. The home cinema living room is able to convert into another guest bedroom thanks to a wall mounted bed on the side. All furnitures were custom made and carefully designed to correspond to the maximum use of space.