Finally we decided to take the leap: we pulled down the old house and replaced it with a new studio house and garden. The new wooden building – a reference to the barns, stables and workshops in the village, and a salute to the few fellow architects in the Vorarlberg region who had begun building good new houses of wood – now occupies the northern, and the garden the southern section of the site, as is proper. The studio contains two south-facing rooms: the upper one for working, the ground-floor one with a fireplace, a view of the garden and a small kitchen for entertaining.