“Our studio relishes working with old, idiosyncratic or unusual buildings because it gives us something to respond to and create a narrative around.You see vernacular structures like these all over the Alpine region which runs through Austria, France, Germany, Italy, Slovenia, and Switzerland.
We hoped the interior would feel much like the original site – collected, discovered, hidden, domestic. For both cost savings and truth-telling, we salvaged every wall panel in the Main Building and carefully re-panelized the rooms as they were when we found them. We also vacuum-kiln dried four large, old growth trees from the land with Megan Offner that were already planned for culling and used those 2000 board feet of Red Oak and Maple for all the furniture in the guest room beds, bedside tables, and daybeds.
We try to embrace a truly regional approach in our projects; saying decisions are “contextual” cannot be about application of motif but a real material integrity. Japanese minkas or mountain chalets both evolve out of their environment and the domestic culture that occupies them. Above all functional and pragmatic spaces, they are vernacular structures, belonging to their origin. Early meditations were on sleep, forest paths, the sound of trees in Spring, naps in the sun, woodland creatures, and the crackling silence of Winter.” LD
PHOTOGRAPHY BY CHRIS MOTTALINI
