Kessler’s Mountain Lodge — Courtyard Living With Alpine Warmth Inside
Kessler’s Mountain Lodge anchors a reimagined farmstead in Natz-Schabs, Italy, where hospitality meets working agriculture. Stefan Gamper Architecture shapes a multi-building retreat around a protected courtyard, balancing guest comfort with regional materials and rhythm. Set within the alpine landscape, the lodge reads as both a guesthouse and a living farm, with chalets and apartments threaded into day-to-day production.
Low morning light skims rough larch, then settles in the courtyard. Buildings step around a sheltered heart where children play, steam drifts from hot tubs, and the hills ring the edge.
A former farmstead becomes a family-run lodge that pairs hospitality with working land. In Natz-Schabs, Stefan Gamper Architecture organizes apartments, chalets, and communal rooms around an angled courtyard, reading rural typology through today’s use. The throughline is daily life: arrivals, breakfasts, play, wellness, and production moving in a clear cycle across the ensemble.
Gather Around Courtyard
Main and ancillary volumes hinge to form a wind-quiet center that doubles as a social square. Nature trails thread in, with wooden seating and a small playground inviting pause while framing long views to open fields. Paths keep movement legible: guests cross the court to breakfast, then peel off toward chalets, apartments, or the hillside levels below.
Balance Farm And Stay
The plan respects the farm typology and lets work continue without spectacle. A machine room tucks into the slope, while a processing area handles juices, jams, and vegetables that later surface in the reception’s farm shop. Guests meet production at the right distance—visible, proximate, yet never in the way of leisure or rest.
Layer Homes And Rooms
The ensemble mixes a converted existing building, a two-part new wing, and four timber chalets to create varied stays. The main house gathers four vacation apartments, the operator’s home, a small apartment, and shared rooms—breakfast, kitchen, storage—so daily routines run smoothly. A rebuilt structure with a double gable roof holds twelve residential units and ties into the main building at ground level for easy service runs and guest flow.
Shape Private Retreats
Chalets stand as independent wooden volumes, their proportions tuned to the broader composition. Two sit slightly offset and link by a low connector, softening mass while preserving privacy. Each chalet organizes an open living area, a sheltered bedroom, and a covered terrace so mornings reach outdoors and evenings draw in. Private wellness is standard: sauna, outdoor hot tub, and in some cases a freestanding tub set the tone for unhurried time.
Work With Timber
Material choices back the program with durability and warmth. Interiors pair raw spruce and washed barn boards with fine joinery, while some apartments move to brushed, steamed larch for a quieter grain. Regionally sourced brushed larch shapes facades, windows, doors, and roof structures, capped with traditional tiles. Heat comes from a wood chip system fueled by the lodge’s own forest—an energy loop that underwrites KlimaHaus A Nature certification.
By afternoon, the court gathers people and shade, while hillside rooms keep the farm’s pulse steady. The buildings keep their voices low, letting use set the tempo. Calm, capable, and rooted, the lodge carries yesterday’s order into today’s stay.
Photography by Helmuth Rier
Visit Stefan Gamper Architecture
