Location: Stäfa, Switzerland

Design Team: Peter Moor Architects

Area: 344 m² (building footprint)

Year: 2024

Photography: Roger Frei, Rasmus Norlander

Design Features: Restaurant Frohberg occupies a vineyard slope above Lake Zurich in Stäfa, Switzerland. Long established as a local excursion restaurant, the site called for continuity rather than an isolated architectural statement. Peter Moor Architects drew on the lake-facing gables of traditional houses around Lake Zurich, arranging two perpendicular pitched-roof volumes to bring dining, celebration and outlook together at a familiar rural scale.

The long eastern wing contains the kitchen, building services and everyday dining room, while the transverse western volume forms a tall banquet hall. They meet at a central entrance, keeping the programme legible while their intersecting ridges produce a coherent silhouette. Inside the hall, the pitched roof becomes a tent-like room: exposed timber and full-height glazing at the end of the space direct attention toward the lake.

The project's defining move occurs along the vineyard edge. Rather than ending at the roof, the gable descends into the slope as a thick element that is simultaneously facade, retaining wall and landscape boundary. The building stands on this wall and becomes the wall itself. In doing so, it reorganises the levels between terrace, basement and vineyard and gives the restaurant a grounded presence on the hillside.

Heavy gable walls are set against structurally open long elevations. Rough warm-grey render gives the solid surfaces weight, while timber posts and broad areas of glazing extend along the view. Folding larch shutters can be parked within the reveals, shifting between shade, open panorama and the memory of rural building traditions. Inside, timber beams, parquet floors and a restrained palette allow the construction rhythm to shape the atmosphere of the dining rooms.

The restaurant provides 118 outdoor seats and 126 indoor seats, including 64 in the banquet hall. Lake Zurich is not treated as a single framed image; entrance, tables, columns, shutters and terraces repeatedly recalibrate the distance from which it is seen. Familiar gables carry local memory, while clear structure and open edges renew a public destination where landscape and shared meals remain inseparable.

Design Team: Peter Moor Architects was founded in Zurich by Swiss architect Peter Moor in 2006 and became Peter Moor GmbH in 2008. Born in Zofingen, Moor first trained as an architectural draughtsman before studying at the technical college in Brugg-Windisch and ETH Zurich; he also spent a semester in Peter Zumthor's studio at the Accademia di Architettura di Mendrisio. After graduating from ETH Zurich in 2001, he worked as a project architect and associate at Burkard Meyer Architekten in Baden until establishing his own practice.

The studio retains the workshop character of its first home, treating urban analysis, hand-built models, material selection and construction development as one continuous process. Its work looks for precise reductions within complex conditions, bringing sustainable construction, cost awareness and the careful continuation of existing settings into the same design judgement. The interdisciplinary team of more than ten also provides comprehensive planning and construction supervision. Gina Kohlik and Muriel Kuonen led the project, with Fabian Wullschleger responsible for construction management.