The nest of Gypaetus barbatus—the Old World bearded vulture whose wingspan exceeds 9 feet—is a sophisticated feat of construction. It is built with striking foresight, begun more than a hundred days before the eggs are laid, its load-bearing armature of dry branches spanning roughly 6½ feet across. Ornithologists note that the work is shared between the sexes until the clutch arrives, when the pair turns from framework to lining—wool, grass, moss, hide, gathered across several miles and mostly salvaged from earlier structures.
In the Italian Stelvio National Park, among the many such nests wedged into Alpine rock, a considerably larger specimen has just appeared: the work of architect Matteo Thun. It is the new wing of the Hotel Bella Vista, founded in 1875 at the foot of the Ortler massif (12,812 feet), in the hamlet of Trafoi, a toponym from the Latin tres fontes, or three springs. To the south, three glaciers streak the peaks white. Three, again, are the cultural geographies converging here: South Tyrol, originally part of Austria ceded to Italy in 1919, though only a short drive from Lombardy or the Lower Engadine in Switzerland. Historic photographs show the original building as a whitewashed, pitch-roofed stone mass, set at 5,150 feet on one of the hairpin roads climbing to 9,050 feet. The Stelvio Pass dates from a few years after the Congress of Vienna (1815), built to link the Habsburg Empire with a Lombardy reclaimed from Napoleon. The hotel’s Fremdenbuch (the guest register) lists notable names, such as Max Planck, in 1920, fresh off his Nobel Prize.
The addition is wrapped in a woven lattice of square timber members. Photo © Daniel Merler
A century on, tourism is another matter, and the Thöni family—who have managed the hotel for six generations—commissioned Thun, a native of nearby Bolzano, to raise a comparable volume beside the original, extending toward the canyon below. The addition holds 24 rooms, double the original count, plus a wellness center. Though essentially an ordinary reinforced-concrete block, what distinguishes it is its envelope: a woven lattice of square timber members, each rotated 45 degrees, wrapping the building as both landscape camouflage and passive climatic buffer.
The idea, Thun has said, traces to the vultures he watched circling as a boy—a kind of revelation. Beyond flying gliders, he graduated in Florence in 1975 under Adolfo Natalini, founder of Superstudio, with a thesis for a flying machine unveiled to a Pink Floyd soundtrack. In 1981, with the Memphis group, he designed a line of postmodern ceramic coffeepots titled Rara Avis (Rare Bird), later exhibited in American museums.
The timber envelope is a Thun signature; it recurs at his Vigilius Mountain Resort near Merano, Italy (2003), the Hugo Boss headquarters in Switzerland (2006), and the Carinthia Twin Towers in Austria (2009). Whether childhood memory translates convincingly into built form is a matter of vantage point. From afar, against climbing evergreens, it succeeds, as it does from within, where the lattice frames a shifting view while sheltering the room. Up close, though, the weave betrays a want of formal ambition—little exploration of profile, joint, torsion, or density, the kind of refinement that timber construction elsewhere in South Tyrol and Switzerland has achieved in recent years. The grid also reveals a few less convincing details in the volume it wraps—notably, the quite banal partitions between rooms.
Chief among the project’s concerns is the dialogue between old and new. From the valley, the two volumes read as near equals, each retaining, even sharpening, its own typological identity, joined by a connecting body set back enough to read as hinge rather than seam. From the opposite face, that same connector projects outward toward the meadows, trailed by reflecting pools and appurtenances that introduce a busier compositional register.
This connecting volume is now the hotel’s true fulcrum. Clad entirely in Alpine woods (Swiss pine, fir, oak), and featuring the new lounge bar, it opens onto twin panoramas through picture windows: north to the Austrian glaciers, south to the Engadine Dolomites. At its center hangs a dark modernist fireplace, suspended above a slab of quartzite, setting flame against distant ice. Christina Biasi-von Berg conceived the interior design, with furnishings in the white, red, and blue of local folk costume supplying contrast, echoed in the enormous photograph of an athlete in headlong descent through the snow. This is Gustav Thöni, among history’s great alpine skiers and the hotel’s owner: four World Cup overall titles and countless trophies, now scattered throughout in vitrines that render the building something of a shrine to the 75-year-old. In the bar, where the cups cast gold, silver, and bronze reflections like an architectural substance, another shot presides: Thöni with his “Valanga Azzurra” (Blue Avalanche), the historic Italian ski team. He became a legend, his victories converting an elite pastime into a mass phenomenon.
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The suites marry contemporary spareness with Tyrolean craftsmanship (1, 2). Photos © Daniel Merler
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Back, though, to construction matters. Materials are local throughout: wood cut in January under the correct lunar phase, stone quarried nearby, and concrete aggregates drawn from the Trafoi stream. Tucked into the wing’s corner sits the wellness center—yoga rooms, saunas, a gym fitted with timber-clad equipment, an infinity pool open toward the canyon. It is precisely in this corner, where the building emerges from the rock, that the architecture might have reached for something more—a sensory engagement with matter itself: consider, to cite a well-known case, Peter Zumthor’s Therme Vals, where water and stone read as a geological narrative rather than conventional luxury.
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Interiors, including the lobby (3) and bar (4), offer cozy spots within the Alpine setting. A pool (5) and whirlpool tubs (6) bring a nautical mood to the mountains. Photos © Daniel Merler
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The suites are among the project’s most accomplished elements, marrying contemporary spareness with the “pauper” strain of Alpine building plus Tyrolean craftsmanship, such as the chairs with heart-shaped cutouts in the backrest. Among the finer details are timber alcoves open to the landscape—“cocoons with a view,” says the architect. Even though we are in the mountains, an almost nautical mood prevails on the balconies—sheltered by the “nest” and fitted with whirlpool tubs—most of all above the canyon, where water rushes ceaselessly and the bearded vultures, in their own fashion, go on building.
Images courtesy Matteo Thun & Partners; click to enlarge
Credits
Architect:
Matteo Thun & Partners — Matteo Thun (founder); Antonio Rodriguez, Elisa Vago, Matteo Beretta, Boris Ulrich, Karola Gröger (design team)
Consultant:
Bauteam (structural engineering and construction management)
General Contractor:
Schönthaler A. & Söhne
Client:
Thöni Family
Size:
129,000 square feet
Cost:
withheld
Completion:
May 2026
Sources
Flooring:
Alpenboden (wood); Fuchs (stone & tile)
Pool & Saunas:
Hofer Group
Outdoor Furniture:
Unopiù
Fitness Equipment:
TechnoGym
Whirlpools:
HotSpring