This prototype house overlooking Lake Maggiore was designed by Nicole Lachelle and Christian Niessen to demonstrate the capabilities of prefabricated wood construction, and features charred-timber facades enclosing a bright-white interior.

Lachelle and Niessen are the founders of fashion label No Editions, and more recently established a studio called The Wood Creative to explore innovative ways of building using wood-panel construction methods.
The designers believe wood construction represents "the most modern, ecological, sustainable, flexible, beautiful, enjoyable, healthiest and smartest way to build", which they wanted their rural retreat to epitomise.

The design of The Wood Building is intended to reflect the same aesthetic principles used in the creation of the duo's fashion collections, resulting in a simple structure with a pared-back, monochrome material palette. "The coherent creative principles are expressed through clean forms, lack of extraneous decoration and a straightforward palette of materials used in their original state," said Lachelle and Niessen.

The house, which was completed in 2014, is positioned on a flat patch of land on a hillside site overlooking the lake in the foothills of the Swiss Alps, with its main axis arranged in an east-west orientation.
The rectilinear volume was constructed using solid cross-laminated timber (CLT) panels set on a concrete base, which facilitated a swift build time as the panels were prefabrica...