04
35 years
of creation
The new owners wanted to make the house into a
special place that could offer the luxury of a pro-
tective cocoon against the climate’s harshness, but
also all the facilities that the contemporary wellness
mindset demands. It required an adoption of the
simplicity of mountain refuges while retaining the
highest levels of comfort, playing with marriages of
authentic materials (wood, stone, patinated metal),
brought out by visual and tactile contrasts. The
project was shaped by the train journeys that link
Chur to Saint Moritz along a high-altitude track: the
succession of landscapes provided the first avenues
of inspiration. The fact that the house stands in
the heart of a natural setting of contrasting tones
guided the search for and selection of the materials:
the dark gray of local granite ripped out of the moun-
tain, the silvery gray of lichen, the softness of moss,
the deep green of larches, and the whiteness of the
landscape, snow-covered for much of the year, along
with the presence of the forest, suggested a set of
colors that perfectly suited the site. This mineral wor-
ld, softened in the winter by snow and in the summer
by greenery, was something that Liaigre’s teams
wanted to echo inside the house. The constraints
imposed by a highly protected region where no
increase in the surface area of buildings is allowed
led to the retention of the existing footprint and the
excavation of a lower level to contain a sauna and
spa. It’s the granite that came from this excavation
that is found on the living room walls—a way of
inviting the mountain’s rock faces indoors.
snow-capped
engadine
ST M ORIT Z
