In Bramois, on the outskirts of Sion, Sion-based practice R2A architectes gives each of two stacked apartments an opposite relationship to the ground — one sunk into the garden, the other cantilevered above it. The two-family house replaces the standardized cubic duplex typical of Switzerland’s low-density zones with an open structural system built around a single concrete core. The result is two distinct ways of inhabiting the same site rather than two mirrored units stacked on top of each other.
The site itself sets the plan in motion. Positioned in the exposed northwest corner, where the property meets the flow of the surrounding neighborhood, the carport acts as a deliberate screen, absorbing that exposure so the two-family home behind it can stay quiet. The garden is not landscaping applied after the fact: it functions as the project’s primary facade, with the house read as a structure anchored inside it rather than set beside it.
Two units share the plot without sharing much else. The layout superimposes two independent apartments for two distinct households, each with its own separate exterior entrance. There is no shared hallway and no forced proximity between residents who happen to live one floor apart. The unheated circulation spaces that connect entrances to units are left outside the building’s thermal envelope, a decision that shrinks what needs heating without shrinking how the plan works.
The ground floor sinks slightly below grade, and that small drop defines the sunken ground-floor apartment‘s entire relationship to its surroundings. Eye level aligns with the vegetation outside, pulling the flower-filled meadow and its changing seasons as close as the windows allow. The effect reads as an almost archaic form of privacy — not walls keeping the world out, but a garden that closes around the apartment like an enveloping presence.
Upstairs, the logic reverses. The apartment extends onto a generous covered terrace, sheltered under the roof slab, and the ground recedes rather than presses close. Where the lower unit is immersed, the upper one is suspended — two sister typologies built from the same central concrete core but delivering opposite relationships to the site around them.
That concrete core does the heavy lifting, literally. Two horizontal slabs rest on peripheral steel columns and the core itself, which transmits loads, provides seismic bracing, and carries the building’s mechanical and electrical systems. The facades attached to it carry no load of their own — they filter, protect, and frame rather than support. Around this core, rooms radiate outward along the periphery, each catching a different orientation and view toward the garden.
Materials are left to speak plainly rather than dressed up. Inside, raw concrete meets oak — concrete for mass and permanence, oak for warmth and daily use — without the screeds, plaster, or coatings that would normally smooth the contrast between them. Outside, galvanized steel and anodized aluminum catch light without glare, and staggered fiber-cement panels wrap the structure in a lightweight skin built to develop a patina rather than resist one.
Nothing here pretends to be finished in the conventional sense. The entire structure sits on an exposed, unfinished foundation slab, and the same logic — using raw or semi-finished materials rather than concealing them — runs through the whole project. It’s a position R2A has taken elsewhere in Valais, where the studio’s Maison Bellon-Camprubi similarly lets timber and structure remain legible rather than dressed over.
Sustainability runs through the systems, not through added technology. A green roof, a carport converted into a solar power system, permeable outdoor landscaping, and a rainwater infiltration system handle most of the environmental performance without relying on anything mechanically complex. Eliminating superfluous finishing layers does the rest, reducing embodied energy simply by building with fewer materials rather than more efficient ones.
The two apartments never share a floor plan, only a question about where a home meets the ground — answered twice, in opposite directions, under the same roof slab.
Caloz Bramois House by R2A architectes | Location: Bramois, Sion, Switzerland — Year: 2025 — Key materials: Concrete, oak, galvanized steel, anodized aluminum, fiber-cement panels