Tour Giorgio Armani's House in Switzerland

This article originally appeared in the March 2012 issue of Architectural Digest

Architecturally speaking, the Engadine Valley in southeast Switzerland pushes few envelopes. Best known for the posh resort of Saint Moritz, this dramatic 60-mile-long stretch between jagged mountains is dotted with traditional stone houses whose parchment-color exteriors have been embellished with folkloric sgraffito, decoration made by scratching the plaster walls with iron nails. Characteristic, too, are small windows whose size keeps the alpine chill at bay while their deeply angled recesses funnel precious light indoors.

By those measures fashion designerGiorgio Armani’s winter house in La Punt—a peaceful hamlet several miles (and a world away) from the social whirl of Saint Moritz—represents the gemütlich ideal. Thick shutters protect its diminutive windows, and bold sgraffito on the front incorporates the three-story home’s name, Chesa Orso Bianco, or Polar Bear House, which was bestowed by a previous inhabitant. Once the dark-wood door at the center of the perfectly restored 17th-century façade swings open, however, quaint Swiss fantasies give way to a far more cosmopolitan reality. The low-ceilinged rooms of richly carved pine one expects to see in this corner of the Alps are nowhere to be found. Instead Armani’s interiors possess the formal grace of a Japaneseryokan,only darker in tone and significantly more luxurious. Rooms lined with polished planks of mahogany and punctuated with strategic accents of orange and red are minimally furnished withtansuchests as well as leanArmani/Casasofas, chairs, and lighting. The Milan-based designer enlisted his own team to carry out the scheme, and it bears the hallmarks of his obsessive attention to detail throughout.

“As a rule the qualities that appeal to me most in Asian style are its precise lines, pure aesthetic, geometric shapes, and wealth of exquisite detailing,” says Armani, who referenced kimonos and mother-of-pearl in two recent runway collections. That affinity for Far Eastern refinement might seem out of place in the rugged Engadine, but in Armani’s home it is curiously harmonious, more complement than clash.

Built in the center of La Punt, Chesa Orso Bianco had survived the centuries largely unchanged when the designer first spied it several years ago. The façade was covered in an unromantic coat of whitewash, so Armani added his own sgraffito. Inside, the layout was rather confusing, he recalls, with “small bedrooms connected by a series of corridors and staircases that followed no particular plan.” A more positive feature was the substantial hay barn attached to one end of the house. Armani cleverly transformed the rustic space into a lofty living room flooded with southern light, adding a glass curtain wall and a spacious terrace inspired by those found in architect Rudolph Schindler’s 1926 Lovell Beach House in Newport Beach, California. The transparent expanse visually marries the architecture to the heart-stirring mountain views, while the alteration remains mostly hidden from passersby, ensuring that the street’s historic character is unblemished.

克制,灵敏度是阿玛尼的主旋律’s career, which began in the late ’50s, when the Piacenza native became a buyer at La Rinascente, Milan’s grande-dame department store. He launched his fashion house in 1975, and it has since grown into a global luxury empire, with products ranging from gowns for the likes of Glenn Close, Princess Charlene of Monaco, and Lady Gaga to eponymous hotels (his 95-room Milan flagship opened last fall) to consumer electronics (a partnership with Samsung has resulted in a mobile phone and a flat-screen television). “The key to my success is coherence,” explains the designer, who, in addition to his houses in La Punt and Milan, maintains homes in New York City and Antigua as well as on the Sicilian isle of Pantelleria. “I bring the same consistent approach to every aesthetic canon to which I aspire—and I never stray. If you know exactly what you are aiming for, then it is not difficult to remain coherent.”

Wood is the major component of Engadine style, and so it is in Chesa Orso Bianco—whose name is embodied by the taxidermy polar bear that looms in the living room (a gift, Armani says, “from someone I am very fond of”). Explaining his choice of mahogany, the designer notes that not only is it durable but it also has “a color and texture that convey a deep sense of warmth.” In the barn turned living room, the mahogany beams overhead are placed to correspond with the second floor of the adjoining house, establishing a union between the then and now aspects of the architecture while amplifying the spatial drama. Despite Armani’s haute couture upgrade, the barn’s utilitarian legacy remains subtly intact. “Each of my houses has a specific identity that respects its context while at the same time expressing my own aesthetic credo,” he says.

On the ground floor of Armani’s La Punt house, Japanese-style sliding doors lining a central hallway provide access to the dining room, kitchen, and living room. A pair of open staircases lead to the home’s six bedrooms, including the expansive top-floor master suite with vaulted ceilings and dormer windows. In these private quarters mahogany elements frame walls troweled with creamymarmorino veneziano,an ancient Roman mixture of lime putty and crushed marble that is typically polished to resemble limestone. This waterproof treatment is also employed in the kitchen, a lovely space with a barrel-vault ceiling and a stately canopied island that give it the aspect of a private chapel.

There is, in fact, something spiritual about Armani’s hushed interiors, pure spaces free of extraneous ornament and consciously avoiding extremes in color, materials, and styles. “It is about the essentials,” the designer observes of his approach. “Forget about every type of excess and concentrate on elegance achieved through simple lines. Beauty must be consistently linked to functionality, because wherever one is living, it should be a place where you feel totally at ease.”

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