Hasenberg Lodge – Walenstadt, Switzerland
A private 1970s modernist hideaway suspended between the Walensee and the Churfirsten
Why DNA Hotels Loves It
● A remarkably intact 1971 modernist interpretation of the Swiss chalet, restored by architect-owners Michelle Corrodi and Roger Zogg without designing away its original character.
● The interiors are a highly personal composition of auction finds, vintage Swiss furniture, bold colour and original 1970s details rather than a catalogue of predictable design pieces.
● Two self-contained apartments make this more private house than hotel — with the Walensee, Churfirsten and some of eastern Switzerland’s most dramatic scenery filling the windows.
When the House Is the Destination
Some places earn their place at DNA Hotels because of extraordinary service, a restaurant or a bar. At Hasenberg Lodge, the architecture itself is the reason to come. Perched high above Walenstadt and the intensely blue Walensee, the house looks across the water towards the seven limestone peaks of the Churfirsten. Forest, mountains and lake appear in overlapping layers that can look almost unreal — part Alpine panorama, part Japanese landscape painting. And sitting quietly within it is a piece of 1970s Swiss modernism. Built in 1971, Hasenberg Lodge reinterprets the familiar Alpine chalet through crisp geometry, broad glazing and an unusually sophisticated understanding of light and landscape. It’s only around an hour from Zurich. Visually, it feels much further away.
A 1971 Original, Carefully Brought Back
The house was originally designed by a Zurich architect with close ties to Werk, Bauen + Wohnen, Switzerland’s influential architecture publication. Its current owners, architects Michelle Corrodi and Roger Zogg, understood that modernising a building like this didn’t require making it look new. Their 2020 intervention was therefore deliberately restrained. The façade and roof were insulated, windows replaced and solar panels discreetly incorporated, improving the building’s energy performance dramatically. Internally, the original layout and architectural language were largely retained, with only limited spatial changes. Even some of the original 1970s bathroom tiles survive. It’s a restoration based on a refreshingly simple principle: when the architecture was good to begin with, don’t mess with it unnecessarily.
Two Apartments, One Architectural Composition
Hasenberg Lodge isn’t a conventional hotel. Instead, it contains two independent apartments — Gipfelglück (Summit Joy) and Basislager (Base Camp) — which can be rented separately or combined. Basislager opens directly onto its own garden, while Gipfelglück has a broad, partly covered sun terrace complete with a small fishpond. Together, the two spaces reveal the architecture as originally intended: interiors, terraces, garden and landscape operating as one composition. The German idea of a Gesamtkunstwerk — a total work of art — feels unusually appropriate here.
Not Everything Good Needs to Be New
The interiors are where Hasenberg Lodge becomes particularly personal. Rather than filling the house with newly purchased design classics, Michelle and Roger searched auctions and sales across Switzerland, giving existing furniture and objects another life. That decision was partly environmental, but it also gives the house something much harder to purchase: personality accumulated through objects. Mid-century furniture sits against carefully composed fields of colour. Individual walls become graphic planes and, in the Gipfelglück kitchen, the colour composition even extends across the ceiling. There are echoes of De Stijl in the interplay between geometry, planes and colour, but nothing feels like an exercise in recreating an art movement. Basislager’s Bulthaup b2 kitchen, meanwhile, takes an almost opposite approach: highly functional, architectural and stripped of unnecessary decoration. It’s a house designed by people who clearly enjoy design rather than merely collecting it.
Designed by Daylight
Light is almost another building material here. Windows aren’t simply apertures for admiring the mountains. The changing daylight continually alters the interiors, shifting colours and reflections throughout the day. Curtains change the compositions again. That sensitivity isn’t accidental. Michelle Corrodi studied architecture at ETH Zurich and has researched and written about daylight and the way we inhabit space. Roger Zogg arrived at architecture from a more construction-led direction, beginning as a structural draughtsman before continuing his technical studies. Their different backgrounds are visible throughout the lodge. One brings research, cultural history and theory; the other an intimate understanding of construction, materials and how things actually get made. Hasenberg Lodge is where the two meet.
A Garden That Softens the Geometry
Outside, the precision of the architecture gives way to something looser. The landscaped garden wraps the building in planting, organic forms and seasonal colour, softening its hard modernist lines without obscuring them. A swimming pool is shared with the owners, creating another striking plane of water above the much larger lake below. The details inside can be equally playful. One bathroom combines geometric patterns with glossy black vehicle-grade plywood extending across built-in elements, wall and ceiling, creating changing reflections as light moves through the space. Another retains its original tiles as a direct connection to 1971. Restoration here isn’t about returning everything to some imaginary perfect opening day. It’s about allowing different periods of the house’s life to coexist.
The Walensee Does the Rest
Then there is the setting. The Churfirsten rise almost vertically from the opposite side of the Walensee, seven peaks forming one of Switzerland’s most extraordinary mountain silhouettes. Behind the house are forests and trails; across the valley lies Flumserberg. Summer means hiking, swimming, sailing and paddleboarding. Autumn brings mushrooms and the sound of rutting deer. Winter replaces green slopes with snow and puts the ski terrain of Flumserberg within easy reach. But Hasenberg Lodge doesn’t require an itinerary. There is considerable pleasure in simply staying put and watching weather move across the mountains from a piece of architecture specifically designed to make you notice it.
Private House, Not Lifestyle Hotel
There is no lobby scene here. No restaurant downstairs. No concierge programming your afternoon. And that’s precisely the appeal. Hasenberg Lodge is a self-catering architectural retreat for people capable of entertaining themselves. Cook. Open a bottle of wine. Swim. Walk into the forest. Spend too long looking at a chair. Watch the light change over the Churfirsten. Do very little. The experience is closer to temporarily borrowing an architect friend’s exceptionally interesting Swiss home than checking into a hotel.
Architecture as Luxury
Hasenberg Lodge demonstrates something DNA Hotels strongly believes in: luxury doesn’t require conventional luxury-hotel ingredients. Here it is found in an intelligently preserved 1971 building, furniture with a previous life, silence, privacy and a window positioned exactly where it needs to be. Michelle Corrodi and Roger Zogg haven’t turned the house into a polished monument to modernism. They’ve allowed it to remain a home — colourful, functional, occasionally eccentric and intimately connected to its surroundings. And when the Walensee and seven peaks of the Churfirsten are outside your window, adding much more would rather miss the point.
