Shelter in the Swiss Alps

The Lausanne-based Personeni Raffaele Schärer Architectes have turned a chalet in the Herens district of the Swiss Alps formerly used as a shelter for livestock into a vacation home. A common phenomenon in Switzerland, these transformations are suggestive of several simultaneous realities. “It is a well established fact that the collective status of these shelters often prevails over the individual quality of the object. On the other hand the modern use of the mountain cottage involving weekly round-trips, highlights the improbable all-terrain vehicle in the city and the inevitable garage and retaining wall in front of the mountain chalet. The mountain is not as natural and wild as it used to be in the same manner that cities are not urban enough.”

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