Villa Courbe, Swiss Luxury Real Estate, Switzerland Home, Residential Building, Architecture Photos
Villa Courbe on Lac Léman, Switzerland
26 Feb 2020
Villa Courbe, Switzerland
Design: SAOTA

Just as its alpine setting has been formed by many forces over time, Villa Courbe is a residence shaped intuitively and iteratively by many hands ? from sun and topography to brief and local zoning regulations. Seen from the water, the house appears almost at one with the wooded hills that rise gently out of the lake and, at the same time, very different to the traditional suburbia that surrounds it. The need to respond to the topography that came before, drives the design to contrast with the neighbouring houses that appeared only after the glaciers and ice had done their work.
Entering the property from the street, the design negotiates the lakeside slope in a series of full width ?slices? that contours across the wedge-shaped site. The first of these is a triple-storey light scoop that houses a gallery space and creates a threshold to the more private parts of the house beyond. Responding to a critical requirement of the brief, guests can circulate vertically down to a top-lit basement art space which opens up into an entertainment area.

Functionally separated in the ?slice? closest to the lake, the principle living rooms are on the Ground Floor ? a sequence of dining, kitchen and family rooms are sheltered below an upper storey housing the bedrooms whilst a double-height livin...