After 30 years in their farmhouse outside Bolzano, in northern Italy, and with their children grown up, Josef Ebner and Angela Sabine Staffler found themselves with surplus space and decided to convert part of the property for rent. So they created two apartments in their existing house (where they still live) and a pair of mini-residences in a new building, catering to tourists who flock to the mountains of South Tyrol. Though the couple had no particular intention that architecture should itself be a draw, recalls Ebner, they wanted 'something special' and called in architect Peter Pichler, who had recently established his own office in Bolzano after working for Zaha Hadid.

Permission from the local authorities to develop the site imposed a strict limit on the interior volume of the new building'sufficient for two dwellings, each 430 square feet, with a ceiling height of 9 feet'and required that it should sit just yards from the farmhouse. The location allowed the new houses to face a private access road and apple orchards beyond, but meant they would back onto the family's pool and block the view from the farmhouse's garden. Consequently, the clients' only brief was that the building should be 'there but not there'; the design should make a positive contribution to the landscape, while somehow receding from view.