Residential · Verbier, Switzerland · 2025

The Snowline House

Stone, glass and firelight, a thousand metres above the valley.

Overview

The Snowline House sits where the forest gives way to the valley and the peaks. It is planned as a courtyard: you arrive between two long travertine wings, and the house opens up only once you are inside it.

Beyond the entrance, a single long room runs from the fire to the pool, glazed on both sides. In January the heated water steams against the snow, and the mountains repeat in its surface.

Every material was chosen to be warm to the hand in winter: honed travertine over underfloor heating, walnut-lined walls, and bronze details that darken slowly with the years.

Location: Verbier, Switzerland
Year: 2025
Status: Completed
Typology: Residential
Coordinates: 46.0960° N, 7.2286° E

In winter the house is a lantern in the snow. In summer it disappears into the pines.

Halden & Voss

Gallery

A closer look.

Nine images. Select any one to see it full screen.

04 / 09The long room, glazed on both sides, running from the fire toward the pool

The house in motion

Fire at one end. Water at the other.

The long room at dusk: the hearth lit, walnut and travertine warming in its light, and the pool glowing through the glass beyond.

Drawings

Drawn to be built.

Plan, section and elevation, from the entrance to the pool terrace, each drawn to scale on the structural grid.

The ground floor, set out on a 6 × 5 m structural grid.36 × 15 m · 5 rooms · 554 m² ground floor

Materials

Made of few things.

Four materials, chosen at the source and left to age. Nothing is painted to look like something else.

Honed Travertine
Selected in blocks at the quarry, honed and never polished. It warms in the sun and stays cool underfoot.
Oiled Walnut
Book-matched panels, oiled by hand and left to darken. The grain runs unbroken from floor to ceiling.
Low-iron Glass
Without the green cast of ordinary glass, so the landscape reads true from edge to edge.
Fair-faced Concrete
Cast once, in timber formwork we draw ourselves. The tie holes stay: they are how you read the pour.