Mierta & Kurt Lazzarini Architekten: Longhin - best architects 16

Mierta & Kurt Lazzarini Architekten

Longhin

best architects 16

commercial/industrial buildings

Place

Maloja / Switzerland

Photos

Ralph Feiner

Description

The building is located at the foot of the Piz Lunghin mountain, on the main road from Maloja, the highest alpine village on the Maloja Pass road and the point where the different building cultures of Engadin and the Val Bregaglia meet. It houses a hotel run by the third generation in this setting, offering rooms, holiday apartments, a small spa and a spacious restaurant. The formal idiom and architecture take up and reinterpret the typical building materials of the Val Bregaglia: wood and stone. With its rough and irregular stone-like exposed aggregate concrete façade and polygonal form, the structure looks like an inhabited »boulder« that has seemingly been left behind by a receding glacier. Interior surfaces, loggias and rooftop terraces as well as doors and window frames have been clad in larchwood. This brings cosiness and comfort to the austere concrete and a pleasant, warm contrast.