STROBILUS takes its name from the botanical term for the conifer cone — the seed vessel that has spent two hundred million years solving the exact problem this Alpine refuge asks us to solve: how a small, warm, living space survives, and thrives, inside a cold and exposed landscape.

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Rather than impose architecture onto the meadow above the lake, Strobilus borrows its logic from the conifers already growing there. A cluster of seed-like refuge pods — laminated timber shells wrapped in glass, each housing two to four guests — settles into the terrain the way cones fall and take root: dispersed, sheltered, oriented to catch light and framed views of forest, mountain, and lake.

 

A single Lodge anchors the cluster, its folded timber roof echoing the layered geometry of pine needles. Below, a gallery, restaurant, and medical station open onto the approach boardwalk; above, a gridshell Observation Gallery cantilevers toward the valley for the site's widest view.

 

Built entirely from prefabricated laminated timber on minimal-impact point foundations, Strobilus asks the same restraint of its architecture that its namesake asks of nature: take only what the landscape can sustainably give back

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​​​​​​Architecture Design: atelierMIDE

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