David Montalba has always worked between worlds. The Swiss-American architect founded the award-winning Montalba Architects in 2004 after formative years at leading Los Angeles studios, carrying forward a sensibility shaped by context, material integrity, and light. Today, his practice operates globally from offices in Santa Monica, New York, and Lausanne, spanning residential, hospitality, and high-profile projects for brands, including The Row, Monique Lhuillier, and the global hospitality and restaurant group Nobu.
Yet for all its international reach, the studio’s work has never been placeless. Each project begins with a close reading of its context, considering landscape, climate, light, and the way people will move through and inhabit a space over time. Rather than imposing a signature style, Montalba Architects allows architecture to emerge from its surroundings, creating buildings that feel naturally anchored to the site. Across Switzerland, this considered approach is shaping a new generation of homes, spaces designed to feel intuitive and in harmony with their surroundings.
This approach is perhaps most clearly expressed in The Gryon Chalet, a project that rethinks the traditional Swiss alpine home through a contemporary, material-led lens. Set high on a steep slope in the Vaud Alps, the three-storey chalet presents a dark, geometric silhouette defined by pre-blackened timber cladding and a wide sloping metal roof fitted with solar slats, a pragmatic response to both climate and form. Over time, the wood exterior continues to darken under the sun, allowing the house to age naturally into the landscape and read almost as a monolithic object against the mountains. Wood wraps over much of the façade to provide privacy on the exposed site, while large areas remain open towards the Grand Muveran massif. Inside, natural wood and stone soften the dramatic exterior, complemented by modern, intimate interiors that echo the comfort of traditional chalet, while expansive floor-to-ceiling windows frame the surrounding peaks, drawing light and landscape deep into the living spaces. The result is a chalet that feels rooted, where material honesty and contemporary living move in quiet rhythm with the landscape.
This same approach carries through to the studio’s other Swiss projects, each responding differently to its setting. At Whitepod Eco Chalets in Monthey, architecture becomes elemental, with monolithic wooden forms designed for slow, immersive stays at altitude, where day and night spaces are organised around panoramic mountain views. At the other end of the spectrum, the Flore Lake House in Lutry engages in a softer dialogue, reshaping an existing lakeside residence through gentle curves and fluid transitions that mediate between water, vineyards, and light.
At its core, Montalba Architects designs spaces around how people actually live, move, and feel. Materials are chosen for their honesty and longevity, favouring tactile finishes that age gracefully and gain character with time, while interiors and exteriors are conceived in harmony, allowing landscape, views, and natural light to become part of everyday life. The result is architecture that feels grounded rather than performative, spaces that reveal themselves gradually and grow more meaningful the longer they are inhabited.
This approach has found renewed clarity in Switzerland, particularly through the studio’s increasing presence in Zurich. For David Montalba, this is not a new direction but a return to a place where precision, craftsmanship, and cultural awareness are deeply ingrained in the way buildings are conceived and experienced.
