The Paris-based Japanese architect Tsuyoshi Tane – founder of the architecture firm ATTA – was commissioned to build this cabin, raised on a stone base with a timber structure enclosed with thatch, a material chosen for its insulating properties.

It is the latest addition to the furniture brand Vitra’s campus in Weil am Rhein, a German town close to the Swiss city of Basel. There it has joined buildings by Tadao Ando, Buckminster Fuller, Frank Gehry, Nicholas Grimshaw, Zaha Hadid, Herzog & de Meuron, Renzo Piano, Jean Prouvé, SANAA, Álvaro Siza, and more.

The compact 15-square-meter garden house takes in 8 people and is designed for gardeners on the campus to relax in. Visitors can go up to the roof deck by climbing an exterior wooden staircase with a banister woven with rope. According to Tane, the design references primitive Swiss houses. Shaped as a square with the corners cut off, the volume was raised with natural materials assembled by local craftsmen.

In developing the design Tane’s team constructed hundreds of small models with moss, earth, sticks, and stones. The miniature huts and caves were shown in an exhibition at the Vitra Design Museum in the autumn of 2023.

Fotografía de Julien Lanoo, cortesía de ATTA y Vitra.