Timber architecture in the rhythm of the seasons
© Photo: Ralph Feiner, Malans
A replacement after a fire: the new restaurant at Lake Cauma stacks summer kiosk and year-round use into a quiet volume at the forest edge — with the smallest possible footprint and a façade that opens and closes seasonally.
Lake Cauma has been used as a spa and bathing lake since the early days of alpine summer tourism in the early 19th century. Faced with the changing alpine environment due to climate change, the municipality of Flims is using the new restaurant — a replacement after a fire — to explore alternatives to winter tourism. The timber building stacks the different uses into a single volume that changes with the rhythm of the seasons.
Over time, infrastructure buildings have established different relationships with the strong landscape elements of water, forest and rock. To protect the landscape, the new volume nestles into the edge of the forest and frees the lakeshore. The uses are stacked on top of one another with the smallest possible footprint. The steep gable roof turns the building into a calm form at the forest edge.
In addition to giving identity, the forest is the local material resource of the building's construction. The load-bearing structure is precisely inscribed into the different rooms as a column-and-shear-wall system. The construction, assembled from linear elements, creates strong, tectonic spaces inside. Under one roof are gathered the year-round restaurant and the kitchen; hanging columns and A-shaped supports appear in the space as figures. The fine-grained mezzanine for services and storage transfers loads as a grid to the ground floor, where the self-service summer kiosk is located.
On the outside, folding and sliding façade elements give the volume an adaptability to the rhythm of the seasons and the strongly fluctuating operations at the lake. This mechanical quality creates a mediating layer between inside and outside that expands the spaces in summer and shrinks them in winter. The dark-stained façade dissolves the volume against the backdrop of the forest. The thin aluminium roof, laid on like a sheet of paper, dematerialises its physicality depending on perspective and light.
Timber construction with stacked-plank ceilings, timber columns and prefabricated structural elements. A sustainable approach focused on material efficiency and long-lasting construction.
Integrating the new building into the sensitive setting of Lake Cauma and realising large spans with an efficient timber structure posed particular demands. The use of local timber and a resource-conscious approach underline the project's sustainable character.
„The Restaurant Caumasee combines modern timber architecture with a sustainable and structurally ambitious approach to building."
