This uninhabited building, dating back to c1746, had enormous character and a great position on a plateau with fabulous views. My design split the 450m² building into an owners’ apartment of 90m² and a commercial holiday chalet of 360m². The design created luxurious accommodation with comfortable spaces, a connection to the alpine landscape, and a blend of modern fittings with rustic materials. I also wanted to reuse as much of the original building’s wood as possible. Technical challenges to resolve included structural beam calculations for a large new covered 20m² balcony supporting an eight-person hot tub, with a new roof above. The calculations for the roof had to consider the structural loading of snow in the winter. The traditional Savoyard style roofs retain the snow with snow bars rather than let it slide off so in an average winter this new section of roof would need to support up to 35 tonnes of snow. My design fused vernacular forms - stone walls, vertical timber cladding, generous roof overhangs - with more modern elements such as large expanses of glass. The character of this ancient Savoyard building was reinforced by removing the concrete render that covered the external stone facade and painstakingly repointing the exposed stonework with a lime mortar to allow the building to breathe.