The Monte Rosa Hut By Bearth & Deplazes Architekten

On the lowest level the communal areas are surrounded by ribbon glazing. The bedrooms are located above. The impressive mountain panorama can be seen while climbing up the cascading spiral stairway. One of the outstanding features of the cabin is its self-sufficiency: more than 90 percent of the power supply comes from the sun. In order to achieve that it was constructed from prefabricated frame elements that are isolated. In this way solar energy is stored to distribute the warmth throughout the whole house. Water is produced from surrounding glaciers, then filtered and stored in huge tanks.

The Month Rosa Hut was inaugurated in 2009 as a research project of the Swiss Alpine Club (SAC) and Zurich’s Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) who describe the hut as “the most complex wooden construction in Switzerland“.