Fostering invention at a Swiss ski resort

摘要

If your idea of buildings in ski resorts is of Alpine chalets or of rather blocky concrete buildings that make up in internal luxury for their unprepossessing exteriors, you'll be in for a surprise next time you go to glitzy St Moritz in Switzerland. It is there that Foster and Partners has designed the Chesa Futura apartment building, which combines an unusual rounded form that could only have been designed with the latest in computer technology, with traditional construction techniques applied to materials sourced-locally. Although timber is not the material one immediately associates with the practice, it has used it before, notably for a house in Corsica completed in 1993 for the then-deputy mayor of Nimes, Jean Bousquet.