Casa Sassello

Brissago sits between Lake Maggiore and the steep slopes of the Ghiridone, in the Italian-speaking Swiss canton of Ticino. It was always a crossing point between north and south, and it kept its quiet character anyway: narrow lanes, dry-stone walls, old palazzi, and a history of cigar-making. Above the lake, small hamlets sit in the terraced landscape, linked by old paths and chestnut groves. Incella is one of those quiet places, off to the side of the village, where the view opens right across the water to the mountains opposite and the wooded slopes rise behind you. The vegetation tells you where you are: palms, camellias and olives growing next to chestnuts and oaks, Mediterranean and Alpine at once.

The house was built in the 1950s and had fallen into disrepair before Wespi de Meuron Romeo, the architects based at Caviano just along the lake, rebuilt it between 2023 and 2026. The idea they landed on was to treat the two floors as two different kinds of space rather than one house on two levels. Downstairs is closed and quiet, thick and archaic in feel, but warm rather than austere. Upstairs is glazed floor to ceiling and reads as pure openness and distance. One connecting door decides whether they are two homes or one. Warm natural materials run through both, which is what stops the architecture feeling severe. It works for a family, a group of friends, or anyone who wants to actually live in a piece of architecture for a week rather than look at it.