For more than forty years the restaurant on top of the Chäserrugg, at 2,262 meters, sat in a temporary building. When the cable car opened in 1972, it moved into housing originally put up for construction workers. That housing was torn down, and Herzog & de Meuron built a solid wood restaurant on a concrete foundation in its place. It opened in 2015.
Craftspeople in the valley prefabricated the parts, everything was assembled on the summit over one summer, and the interior was finished the following winter. The spruce is local. The roof hangs low on closely spaced columns, with a covered terrace in front. Three sides are glass. The fourth has niches with built-in benches and tables, each with its own window onto the mountains.
