The penthouse apartment at Alma, one of two apartment houses to become available in Andermatt

The transformation of the village of Andermatt in the Swiss Alps into a place for permanent residence or seasonal getaways is taking more than just the rich amenities already there. It is the care and imagination with which the developers are creating the architectural environment that is drawing in investors, too, as Jenny Southan finds out

You want an escape, away from the crowds, to use year-round and as attractive in summer as it is in winter. It needs to be somewhere secure, clean, easily accessible, with excellent facilities; somewhere your family can indulge in outdoor sports on the doorstep, and then gather for a home-cooked meal, or zip out to the local high-class Asian restaurant in the evening. It should also feel like an attractive investment, in a desirable country in which property is hard for foreigners to acquire; and in a location where there is strong demand for holiday rentals, to provide income when you are not there.

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Welcome to the new apartments being developed in Andermatt in the mountains of central Switzerland. In a country where new-build apartments available for foreigners to buy are almost unheard of, the two new buildings, Frame and Alma, sit aside a central square in the brand-new development village of Andermatt Reuss. They are all part of the spectacular Andermatt Swiss Alps development, which has seen a previously sleepy and marginal ski village in a spectacular location transformed into one of the pearls of the Alps, via a $2bn investment by global place creator Samih Sawiris and his company Orascom.

Panoramic windows in Alma’s penthouse apartment

The development starts at The Chedi Andermatt hotel and restaurant complex, on the edge of the old village, through a rebuilt railway station and gondola lift station, to the hotel, retail and residential complex at Andermatt Reuss, which features the central Piazza Gottardo around which the new apartment buildings are located. Owners have access to the huge indoor swimming pool, spa complex and concert hall at the Radisson Blu Reussen hotel next door, and Piazza Gottardo has a big sports shop, restaurant, bar and other retail to come. The 18-hole golf course, one of the most beautifully located and eco-friendly courses in Europe, is nearby. Zurich airport is just over an hour away by car or train; and speaking of cars, all the parking in Andermatt Reuss is underground, meaning there is no traffic.

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The five-floor Frame apartment house has been designed by Swiss architectural firm OOS with a younger generation in mind. It features 34 apartments (one-bedroom and duplex, some with double-height ceilings) that have been designed to feel airy, generous and bright, despite being compact in size at 50–60 sq m. Bay windows, for example, provide space for sofa beds.

There are also communal areas on the ground level that include bike storage, and a ski room and workshop where you can do repairs. There is a chill-out lounge, a sauna, a courtyard with a fire pit, and the Hearth, which is an entertaining space with a kitchen where you can have drinks or dine with friends. The developer Andermatt Swiss Alps (ASA) says: “You can cook food yourself, get one of the restaurants to deliver or have one of the chefs from the local hotels come in. It’s also a place where, if you are thinking of going out for a week’s hike, you can invite your guide in for a coffee and plot your course.”

Frame features a communal dining area with a kitchen

While the exterior of Frame is based on the look of the handsome rendered buildings already in existence in the village, another apartment building called Alma draws its inspiration from local traditional wooden architecture. The developer says: “Our ambition is that in 20 or 30 years’ time the new and old parts of the village will blend together so it will look like one destination. We always ask our architects to look at the wealth of architecture here but interpret it with a more modern eye because we don’t want it to be a pastiche.”

However, the developers don’t want to create an ‘architectural zoo’ – as the developer puts it, “Everything has to have harmony”. Tasked with designing Alma, which sports dark, over-lapping timber cladding, was Dominik Herzog from the Zurich architectural firm Herzog Architekten. Located on the western edge of Andermatt Reuss, Alma has 11 two- and three-bedroom apartments (measuring 122–169 sq m) that have living rooms with fireplaces, bathrooms with freestanding tubs and large picture windows looking out on to the mountains and the Reuss river. There is a sauna on the ground floor.

Frame’s exterior has been designed to blend in with the village’s existing buildings

The developer says: “The spaces are satisfying, nurturing and enriching. They are not shouty or flashy. They are thoughtfully detailed. Every single apartment has 180-degree views, sunken corner lounges that are heavily upholstered and sheltered balconies so you can go outside even when it’s snowing or windy.” Although Frame and Alma are different from one another, both are firmly rooted in a sense of place. “Their use of materials has been informed by the existing architecture and they have been very careful about how they open up their buildings to the surrounding landscape. The windows almost become the artwork on the walls,” says the developer.

ASA also wanted a car-free environment so much of the investment (millions of dollars in fact) has gone underground to make a double-storey basement of car parking, storage and services. The result is a healthy, liveable, pedestrian-friendly village. The developer explains: “Some people live here full time and others use their property as holiday homes. We have a lot of local clients from Italy, Switzerland and Germany who come for weekends over the season in summer and winter, but also investors from China and Singapore who come and use it before it goes back into the rental pool.”

Open Season

The winter season on Gemsstock runs from 31 October to 25 April, and the Andermatt-Sedrun-Disentis season runs from 19 December to 11 April. These dates are, as always, dependent upon the prevailing snow conditions.

For more information visit: andermatt-swissalps.ch

This article features in the Autumn 2020 Issue, hitting newsstands in October.

Andermatt Concert Hall’s glass façade floods the venue with light

In Andermatt, the sound of music soars beautifully from a remarkable newly opened concert hall. Laura Archer discovers how the state-of-the-art venue is helping to mark the Alpine town out as a vibrant year-round cultural destination as well as a luxury skiing resort

Back when he was a student in Berlin, Samih Sawiris, the chairman of Andermatt Swiss Alps, would do anything to get his hands on tickets to the Philharmonie. He often struck lucky, recalling ending up attending “hundreds” of concerts conducted by the legendary Herbert von Karajan. This summer, decades later, the Berlin Philharmonic inaugurated Sawiris’ state-of-the-art Andermatt Concert Hall with a spectacular performance of Mozart and Shostakovich, marking the start of a world-class programme unrivalled in the Alps. For the property developer, whose passion for classical music is evangelical and who first conceived of the project many years ago, it was a particular joy. When the first notes of Mozart’s Symphony No.34 swirled around the light-filled hall, with forested mountains almost poking through the windows, Sawiris tells LUX, “It was a dream come true. Like many of my dreams, this one entailed long and hard work, but it doubled the pleasure to see the Berlin Philharmonic finally here.”

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While in the past Andermatt has struggled to escape from the shadows of its glitzier Alpine cousins – Gstaad and St. Moritz among them – it is now emerging as a glamorous destination in its own right, thanks to an impressive investment programme designed to transform the village into a year-round destination where superb skiing is just one of the many strings in its bow. At the heart of this development is the 650-seat Andermatt Concert Hall, masterminded by London-based Studio Seilern Architects.

Studio Seilern Architects took every opportunity to add light to the Concert Hall’s design.

The Berlin Philharmonic played the venue’s first concert in June this year

Founder-director Christina Seilern lived in Switzerland until she was 18 and sees the place as something of a second home. This project proved irresistible, giving her a chance to showcase her architectural prowess within an environment she loves. “It brought me back to my roots,” she says. “Given that I grew up in the mountains, it felt appropriate to connect the dramatic landscape to the music within the hall.”

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She has done so in spectacular style, working with an existing underground concrete bunker originally intended to be a conference venue and literally raising the roof, adding a glass façade to create a soaring atrium that floods the concert space below with daylight and opens it up to stunning mountain views. In winter, audiences might find themselves listening to music while watching snow swirl outside, while in summer the green alpine pastures provide a similarly inspiring backdrop. The hall’s bijou size, with incredible acoustics courtesy of Kahle Acoustics and Ducks Scéno (the teams behind the Philharmonie de Paris) creates a sensory experience like no other in the Alps. “It felt like having the orchestra in my living room,” says Seilern of the opening performance. “The intimacy between orchestra and audience was palpable. It was completely electrifying.”

At street level, the clever design means passers-by can also see into the concert hall and enjoy the spectacle, further cementing Sawiris’ vision that classical music is for everyone.

The Andermatt Autumn Music Festival, a satellite of the Lucerne Festival, starts on 24 October 2019 andermatt-swissalps.ch

Gotthard Lofts (here and above)

Stay in style

With so much to see and do in Andermatt, you’ll want to return time and again. And after a long day on the slopes, on the golf course, or hiking, cycling or touring, it’s nice to relax in the comfort of your own home. Gotthard Lofts, a new development of 10 spacious loft-style apartments on the sixth floor of the Radisson Blu hotel, offers your own private space with all the benefits of the hotel’s facilities, including private access to the 25-metre panoramic pool, spa and the concert hall itself. Inside, large balconies make the most of the surrounding scenery, while light woods and neutral tones evoke a modern Alpine spirit. Cook for family and friends one night; dine in the hotel restaurant the next – the flexibility and choice are what make Gotthard Lofts so appealing. Buyers receive a special exception from stringent Swiss property laws about foreign ownership, and receive a host of benefits including a three- year ski pass and the option to rent it out when you’re not there. It’s the smart way to make the most of your precious holiday time.

From CHF 990,000. For more information visit: gotthard-residences.ch

Up next in the exciting new development of Andermatt Swiss Alps? A state-of-the-art concert hall and artworks by a Swiss graffiti artist

At first glance, it might not seem like the most likely pairing: hip, Swiss graffiti artist Ata Bozaci with Andermatt Swiss Alps, the mountain village south of Zurich that over the past nine years has been gradually developed into a world-class, year-round destination resort. Yet Bozaci (who is known for working under the pseudonym ‘Toast’ and counts the late, legendary German photographer Gunter Sachs among his collectors) has been tasked with putting his artistic spin on Eisvogel, the latest apartment house currently under construction in the resort’s Holiday Village Andermatt Reuss.

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The house (which is due for completion in 2019) will be split into a series of smart studios aimed at younger urbanites. Smaller units are planned in a way that makes use of every square metre of space, plus residents can relax in the spa, socialise at the in-house bar and hang out in the communal kitchen, dining and chill-out zone – which is where Bozaci’s distinctive graphics come in. Similarly to the other apartment houses in the holiday village, owners here can also benefit from a specially developed rental concept that encourages them to generate income (and keep the place feeling lively) when they are away.

From the outset, Holiday Village Andermatt Reuss has been at the heart of this £1.3billion development project, encompassing around 500 apartments, 28 exclusive chalets and a handful of hotels including five-star, Jean Michel Gathy-designed, The Chedi Andermatt. An international architectural competition led to 30 global architects (including Kurt Aellen, Itten+Brechbühl and Soliman Zurkirchen) being selected to design the 42 apartment houses and hotels. Of those already sold, 50% have been snapped up by international buyers – many of them British, German and Italians – making the most of the exemption from both the Swiss Second Home Law and the Lex Koller legislation, which restricts the acquisition of real estate by non-Swiss residents.

Some, such as apartment house Alpenrose (due for completion this winter) are set around the main Piazza Gottardo, with its high-end restaurants, cafés and boutiques (other apartment houses are positioned just behind the square). Cleverly combining an alpine-inspired facade that integrates harmoniously into a traditional Swiss village with contemporary interiors, Alpenrose houses 20 apartments, from 50 square metres up to 146. Many have a glazed corner bay that provides excellent views of the surroundings, while maisonettes on the top floors come with their own sauna.

Andermatt’s redevelopment includes new apartment houses, hotels and chalets

Another important addition when it opens this season will be the Gotthard Residences: around 100 apartments, each with the added bonus of hotel services provided by Radisson Blu. Owners of the apartments, ranging from one-bedroom residential units to spacious multi-bedroom apartments and luxurious penthouses, will have complimentary access to the Radisson Blu fitness and wellness centre for the first three years, plus use of a ski locker in the hotel’s fully equipped ski room as well as a concierge on hand 24 hours a day. The Radisson Blu itself will also have six meeting rooms and a conference hall for more than 500 guests – making it an appealing venue for businesses throughout the year.

The process of realising Holiday Village Andermatt Reuss continues to have a positive impact on the local economy, with a 65 percent upswing in construction industry employment (this looks set to continue, with growth predicted in the hospitality, trade and service sectors). The number of overnight stays in the Urseren Valley has also increased massively: in 2016, the numbers reached 100,000 for the first time, and are expecting to hit 260,000 by 2022. This would place Andermatt at the scale of destinations such as Flims-Laax; with further expansion steps, the scale of Engelberg, Arosa or Grindelwald could be reached.

Of course, buyers are flocking here for the stunning natural beauty of the place. From blossoming pastures in summer for hiking and biking to the snow-blanketed mountains in winter, Andermatt Swiss Alps offers something for anyone who appreciates the appeal of fresh air and rural landscapes. Adventurous hardcore skiers come for the excellent powder, black runs and off-piste challenges of the Gemsstock Mountain; others make the most of ice-climbing at Göschenen and the ice-rink in Andermatt.

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Now though, there is a handful of new sporting and cultural additions designed to draw in even more crowds. For starters, there’s the Andermatt Swiss Alps Golf Course (named Swiss Golf Course of the Year in 2017 for the second year in a row). Ranked among the Top 100 Golf Courses of the World with a rating of five stars, the Scottish-flavoured course, designed by the renowned German golf course architect Kurt Rossknecht, is over six kilometres long and meets international tournament standards. It comes with a modern clubhouse, The Swiss House, which doubles up as a hub for cross-country skiers in winter.

Not to mention a busy events calendar featuring the annual Bike Festival Andermatt (watch Olympians and world champions race in the PROFFIX Swiss Bike Cup), Andermatt Swiss Alps Classics (a classical music festival where concerts take place in various locations such as The Chedi Andermatt and the newly opened gondola station Nätschen) and Woldmanndli (based on an ancient custom where a procession of men enter the village to protect the forest below the Gurschen).

There’s also the much-anticipated Andermatt Concert Hall, a renovation of a former convention venue by Studio Seilern, due to open early next year. With an extended roof and covered plaza, it will adhere to the acoustic requirements of a state-of-the-art concert hall and be large enough to accommodate the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra as well as host gala dinners and lectures.

The Studio Seilern-designed concert hall

As part of the ongoing Andermatt Swiss Alps project, there has also recently been a fresh focus on the gastronomy on offer within the resort. Multi-award-winning chef Dietmar Sawyere, who has been executive chef at The Chedi Andermatt since May 2015, has assumed overall responsibility for gastronomy. Currently the top choices for eating out in the resort are the restaurants at The Chedi Andermatt, which include one-Michelin-star The Japanese Restaurant (the five- to 10-course Kaiseki menu is a speciality), a wine and cigar library and the main restaurant, which has a noteworthy cheese cellar. Over the next few years, these offerings will be joined by half a dozen new restaurants in the village of Andermatt and on the surrounding mountains.

It’s all a far cry from when the Swiss Army was garrisoned near to Andermatt after World War II (prior to that it was a chic mountain resort on a par with Verbier and Zermatt). In 2003, the artillery range was closed, effectively reducing the population and the village’s major source of income at the same time. It wasn’t until Samih Sawiris, founder of Orascom Development, visited nearly 20 years ago that everything changed. Inspired by the picture-postcard Urseren Valley and untouched alpine countryside, he had an ambitious vision to turn the fortunes of the village around.

After collaboration with residents, government and tourism organisations, the people of Andermatt voted with an overwhelming 96 percent majority in favour of the development. Construction on the Andermatt Swiss Alps project began in 2009, the Chedi Andermatt opened in 2013 and to date, £687 million has been invested £131 million in 2017 alone).

Key to the master plan has always been merging the Andermatt and Sedrun ski regions into SkiArena Andermatt-Sedrun, the largest ski area in Central Switzerland – something which is coming to fruition this winter and by 2022, is expected to attract around 580,000 skiers over the course of a single season. There are also plans to invest another £305 million in the further expansion of Holiday Village Andermatt Reuss and the train station, cementing the area as a major destination for winter-sport enthusiasts.

The future for Andermatt Swiss Alps looks very bright indeed.

SkiArena Andermatt-Sedrun

This winter’s ski season marks the full opening of the new SkiArena Andermatt-Sedrun: more than 120km of pistes connected by the Oberalppass-Schneehüenerstock gondola cableway which can carry up to 2,400 people an hour from Andermatt to Gütsch mountain station. This huge development project has involved the construction of 14 lifts (some new, some replacements) and creating snow-making systems. Work on several new mountain restaurants is also underway. The result? For the first time ever, it is now possible to ski from Andermatt to Sedrun and back – what a thrill.

For more information visit: andermatt-swissalps.ch 

This article originally appeared in the Autumn 2018 issue, to view more content click here: The Beauty Issue