They all are my dear personal friends from way back. The mother is one-part dentist and part-time juggler who handles three boys and two dogs. The father is one-part entrepreneur, one-part project manager, one-part lecturer and many parts a geek. Together they are a family whose many activities generate mouth-watering photo streams and instantly likeable comments on regular basis.

One day the family decided to build a home for themselves on a high-end plot of land just a stone’s throw away from a nearby town. Admittedly the town had lost a bit of its former glory, but the location was still strong on Alpine vistas and all the benefits of cosy suburban life.

The project started bottom-up, using the gentle slope of the terrain as the guiding principle. It ended with the main entrance and service spaces half buried into the ground – today both form a baseline for the house.

Continuing through the entrance lobby, one ascends a wide staircase and enters the main living area in the form of a bright wooden pavilion that is gently nested on a concrete base and supported by a grassy mound. The L-shape of the pavilion embraces a terrace and a courtyard from two sides, generating a much-needed protective layer against the densely urbanised space all around the house.

All the rooms on the eastern (the bedrooms, bathrooms and boys’ rooms) and those on the southern part of the house (kitchen, dinning and living room) are seamlessly connected.

While most of the rooms have open access to the mound, the boys’ rooms are also disproportionally high (to maximise the use of the available space) and equipped with tubular lights (to enhance the quality of the ambience).

Externally, the terrace ends with an elevated pool. In this way the family is elegantly protected from intrusive looks from the street level, while having unobstructed vistas all over the nearby Alpine world.

From the outside, the house is defined by a distinctive, two-storey-high, arched wall that connects both volumes and ensures visual protection from yet another angle. This wall has a dark metal finish for the moment but wait just a few years and ivy will redesign it into a light green curtain with a charmingly organic feel.