Peak View

Interior architecture

Ski | ZERMATT, SWITZERLAND

A duplex chalet and studio apartment in the shadow of the Matterhorn, stripped to structure and rebuilt from the inside out.

LOCATION: Wiesti, Zermatt, Switzerland
PROJECT TYPE: Complete interior architecture
SCOPE: Interior Architecture · Spatial Redesign · Kitchen Design · Bathroom Design · Bespoke Joinery · Material Specification · Soft Furnishings · Art Curation · Styling

The clients came to us with a duplex chalet in one of the most privileged positions in Zermatt: perched on the sunny hillside of the Wiesti area, with uninterrupted views across the illuminated village to the Matterhorn beyond. The location was extraordinary. The property, built in 2000, was not. It had neither the authenticity of a historic chalet nor the conviction of a contemporary one. The brief was complete: strip it back to structure and rebuild it from the inside out.

The unique challenge here was identity. A chalet that is neither genuinely old nor properly modern sits in difficult territory. It can too easily become a pastiche of alpine conventions it has no right to claim. Our response was to work with richly stained oak and a restrained architectural language that feels rooted in the mountain without borrowing its clichés. The result is a home that belongs completely to its place and entirely to its owners.

The project touched every element of both residences. Walls repositioned, openings reconfigured, two kitchens redesigned, five bedroom suites resolved, and a separate studio apartment transformed by a single inspired spatial move: a redesigned staircase that unlocked an entirely new layout and revealed, through a glass ceiling, an unexpected sightline to the Matterhorn that no one had planned for.

THE ARCHITECTURE

Redefining a character that never quite existed.

The opportunity in a building with no historical obligation is precisely that: freedom from pastiche. We were not working with a protected structure or a vernacular that needed to be honoured. We had a concrete shell and the chance to give it a genuinely considered contemporary alpine identity. One that responds honestly to where it is.

The material language we built around was richly stained oak: warm, deep, and honest about its relationship to the forest and mountain outside. Cream linen wallpaper provides the counterpoint: soft, textural, light-holding. The blackened steel of the new floating staircase and structural columns introduces a harder contemporary edge that prevents the interior from settling into the comfortable rusticity that most alpine renovations never escape.

The centrepiece of the ground floor is a spectacular round bay window framing sweeping views across Zermatt with a direct sightline to the Matterhorn. Triple-glazed, solid oak slimline windows were specified to maximise the panorama while managing the thermal demands of alpine winter. This window is not a design feature. It is a living artwork that changes by season, by hour, by weather. The entire social floor of the chalet is arranged in service of it.

The existing stone fireplace had been positioned facing away from the main seating area, a decision that baffled its own space. Reorienting it to become a proper focal point was one of those moves that seems obvious in retrospect and transforms a room completely. The new floating steel staircase, paired with a minimalist glass balustrade, provides access to the master suite above, sculptural and light against the warmth of the oak behind it.

“The centrepiece is not the fireplace or the staircase or even the palette. It is the window. Everything else is in service of that view.”

— Claudia Dorsch

THE PALETTE

Eight colours in a single fabric.

There is no formula for a colour palette. At its best it arrives through a combination of intuition, serendipity, and the kind of find that stops everyone in the studio simultaneously. A fabric from a new spring collection, richly textured, woven with no fewer than eight distinct hues, arrived and resolved the entire colour question in a single moment.

Lilac, lavender and purple layered with apple, moss, seafoam and deep olive, with accents of blue and copper brown that move against the cream linen walls, the dark oak cladding, and the blackened steel. The palette captures the seasonal vibrancy of the alpine landscape, its greens and purples the colours of the mountain in spring and late summer, without ever illustrating it literally. It gives the chalet an energy that most mountain homes, anchored in the safe neutrality of greige and stone, never achieve.

THE KITCHEN

Functional architecture, not installed furniture.

Both kitchens were conceived as architecturally integrated spaces rather than units placed into a room. Every element was crafted to bespoke dimensions in close collaboration with our specialist joinery workshop. In the main kitchen, the closure of an unnecessary rear window was the decisive spatial move, allowing a full wall of ceiling-height cabinets that gave the kitchen its architectural completeness and the storage logic a chalet this size genuinely requires.

A generous island now provides seating for four and transforms the kitchen into the convivial hub it should always have been. The cabinet doors carry a particular detail: laminated ribbed glass interwoven with a metallic fabric discovered at Maison & Objet and produced by Bisson Bruneel, catching light with a shimmer that sits somewhere between surface and object. The worktops are finished in leathered Andeer granite, a local green stone whose tactile quality and quiet reference to the geology outside were both reasons for choosing it.

THE BEDROOMS

Not an afterthought. A sanctuary.

Every bedroom suite received the same level of attention as the main living floor. Textured linen wallcovering wraps each room in a warmth that paint never produces. Fabric-clad headboards, tailored to each room's proportions and palette, add depth and tactile richness. Fitted wardrobes throughout ensure guests can properly unpack rather than living out of bags. At the centre of each bed is a Treca Paris, hand-crafted and made to order.

Each suite has its own colour identity, carefully calibrated across rugs, wallpapers, curtains, headboards, wardrobe doors, cushions and bedlinen. Individual without feeling disconnected, the same design intelligence expressed differently in every space. The desks in each room are designed to function equally well as vanity tables or working surfaces: an honest acknowledgment of how a holiday home is actually used, without compromising the atmosphere of a space that should above all feel restorative.

THE DETAIL

The things that reveal themselves slowly.

Bed frames raised so that suitcases slide cleanly underneath. Bedside tables wide and deep enough to hold things. Reading lights positioned for reading, not for photography. Artworks selected to reflect winter themes while remaining in conversation with each room's palette. These are the decisions that distinguish a home that feels exceptional from one that merely looks it.

In the bathrooms, limestone-effect and marble-effect porcelain was specified throughout. Not as a compromise, but as the intelligent choice for a high-use holiday home. The porcelain delivers the visual and tactile quality of natural stone without the maintenance anxiety that natural stone in a family holiday context creates. The floors take muddy boots and wet dogs without showing it. Primary flooring throughout is wood-effect porcelain: warm in character, compatible with underfloor heating, and cleanable after a day on the slopes without a second thought. These are the choices that allow guests to feel completely at ease in a space that is genuinely beautiful.

THE MASTER SUITE

The view you wake up to.

The original layout had a certain ambition: a raised platform with a bubble bath behind the bed framing mountain views. But the execution left the spaces loosely defined and the layout diffuse. We reconfigured the entire floor. The master bed now occupies its rightful position facing directly toward the window. The first thing the occupants see each morning is the mountain.

A newly introduced wall provides both architectural structure and functional storage: wardrobes integrated into its depth, dressing areas framed on either side. The ensuite was relocated and enclosed with a sliding door. Roof windows were repositioned, a complex intervention that now floods exactly the right areas of the suite with natural light at exactly the right times of day. In place of the original bubble bath, a bespoke sauna was installed: a private thermal space that aligns with the clients' lifestyle and the alpine context in a way that no bathtub could. After a day on the mountain, the sauna is not a luxury. It is simply where you go.

THE STUDIO

One square metre that changed everything.

The studio arrived as an open-plan volume with no particular character, inadequate storage, and the purposeless quality of a space that had not been properly considered. The transformation began with a staircase. Working closely with a specialist manufacturer, we engineered a more compact, steeper flight than the original, reclaiming one square metre on the upper floor. That single metre allowed for a generous wardrobe at the lower level and created the depth upstairs for a walk-in wardrobe leading to a properly conceived ensuite: shower, bath and double vanity within a footprint that had previously seemed to permit none of them.

The sloping roofline that made the upper bathroom feel confined was resolved by cutting away a section and installing a maximum-size glass ceiling. The intervention brought abundant natural light, and revealed, to everyone's considerable delight, an unexpected sightline to the Matterhorn. Some architectural discoveries cannot be planned. The original ceilings were sandblasted and stained dark, harmonising with the new oak cladding. Two sleeping cabins were tucked under the eaves, each with curtains for privacy, freeing the centre for a dining space that feels genuinely intimate. New walls introduced zoning, storage and surface for art, giving the studio the layered, inhabited quality its original open-plan configuration had never managed.