Axel Vervoordt reworks a 1980s chalet in a Swiss Alpine resort

Axel Vervoordt's guiding idea is that nature leads and people should interfere as little as possible. Here he applies it to a chalet of nearly 10,000 square feet on a prominent site in an unnamed year-round Swiss resort. The 1980s original had size but little atmosphere. The clients are long-standing ones: he has already restored a castle and a Côte d'Azur house for them, and calls them friends who are like family.

Working with the Swiss firm Comina Architecture through tight seasonal building windows, the team enclosed old terraces and then reached for salvaged materials. Antique Swiss wooden ceilings were cut to fit the main rooms, 19th-century pine panelling lines the corridors, and the floors are 16th-century granite and Luzerne stone. The living-room fireplace is built from the plain backs of carved 18th-century stones, which Vervoordt says feel like mountain rocks.

Art by Kazuo Shiraga, Lucio Fontana, Lee Ufan and Chung Chang-Sup sits against the timber and stone. Downstairs there is a stone-paved pool with one wide window onto the peaks. Outside, a courtyard linking several buildings around a 17th-century fountain was reshaped with Nick Pusterla of Tom Stuart-Smith Studio.

This is a private home, so it's one to read rather than visit, and a good lesson in restraint for anyone who likes Alpine interiors.

Our summary of a story from Architectural Digest, published 8 October 2026. Read the original

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