Ski school in Courmayeur

LEAPfactory has created for the new Ski and Snowboard School Courmayeur an elegant wooden construction built with BauBuche, Pollmeier’s laminated veneer lumber.

LEAPfactory, Scuola Sci e Snowboard di Courmayeur

Madera: the soul of wood, nobly expressed

Madera crafts the very essence of wood through the ingenious process of precomposed veneering, resulting in surfaces of captivating visual harmony and inherent sustainability. From flawlessly coordinated color palettes to intricate inlays that whisper stories, each door stands as a genuine tribute to the natural world.

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The ski and snowboard school designed by LEAPfactory is located on the Plan Checrouit at an altitude of 1700 m

The building is small but stylish, and contains two rooms: The main room is located behind the slightly set-back glass façade and contains the reception and administration area, with a common room for the ski instructors located behind it.

The whole construction is made from wood, glass and steel; concrete was not used at all, even in the foundations. The building has a slightly elevated position on top of a timber frame filled with gravel. All elements can be disassembled, making the whole construction recyclable. The building’s architecture is based on s3 – LEAPfactory’s module system for prefabricated constructions, and the planning team were able to use this system in a natural environment for the first time as part of the Courmayeur project.

The roof and exterior walls of the ski school form a single unit and act as a protective cover over the entire length of the building. The roof rhomboid panels made from light metal run from one side of the building to the other, and the dark-grey colour ensures that the new build fits perfectly into its alpine surroundings. Inside, however, the load-bearing timber construction made from light BauBuche is exposed, which together with the textile-covered wall panels creates a modern yet cosy feel.

To create the load-bearing structure, the timber-construction specialists opted for BauBuche, the laminated veneer lumber from Pollmeier, which high load-bearing capacity allowed to choose more slender cross-sections, which in turn allowed us to create a more elegant design than with conventional plywood.

As all components were pre-fabricated, the new ski school in Courmayeur could be constructed within a week as planned, and in good time before the start of the ski season. The only unusual aspect to contend with was the route to the construction site, as there are no roads to the high-alpine resort. Four-wheel trucks delivered most of the components to a height of 1,700 metres while the customised elements for the glass façade came from the valley by helicopter.

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