A Secret Cabin Inside Of A Boulder
Somewhere in the Alps a small designer cabin is hidden inside of a giant boulder. Camouflaged in the surrounding landscape and located around 2,300 meters above sea level in the Les Ruinettes sculpture park, you’ll have a hard time finding this small one-person house.
Cabins have become quite a thing in the past years. As a result, the most extreme landscapes have become hosts of lovely cabins for those who enjoy the landscape the most. Ironically, these also take some of the unaffectedness of the landscape away. In that respect this project is interesting. The Antoine, as this shelter is called, respects the purity of the landscape by adding a layer of secrecy.
From the inside, The Antoine looks like any other designer shelter. It’s made out of pale plywood, offers place for one person and accommodates a bed, table, chair, and stove. From the outside, however, it looks like any other boulder that sticks out of the snow. Visitors that do know where to look for their sleeping place can enter the big boulder through a secret door. At the top of the boulder — out of sight for random passers-by — it has a built-in window for skylight.
The cabin, that has some remarkable similarities with the hidden rooms inside a floating stone in the James Bond movie A View to a Kill, was designed by Swiss architecture firm Bureau A. Their aim was to give people a unique experience as close to nature as possible, and that is what it offers. But the best thing is that it doesn’t take away the experience of others that want to enjoy the same nature.
