At the foot of the Bellevarde face in Val d'Isère, where the piste drops almost directly to the village edge, a five-storey ensemble of larch-clad balconies and steeply pitched roofs sets itself against the mountain with the massing of a traditional Savoyard hamlet rather than a single hotel block. Les Barmes de l'Ours, which carries five stars and around 70 rooms and suites, was conceived to embed itself in the existing grain of the resort — pale stone bases anchoring each volume to the snow line, raw timber framing stepping back across successive terraces toward the treeline above. Inside, the design navigates a familiar tension in luxury alpine hospitality between ethnographic warmth and decorative indulgence, and resolves it with more confidence than most. The lobby lounge layers dry-stacked local stone walls against aged oak floors, natural tree-trunk columns left round and unfinished, and upholstery in animal-print velvets — zebra ottomans, leopard scatter cushions — that push the rustic register firmly toward the theatrical. Guestrooms carry the same material palette of knotted pine panelling and exposed beam ceilings into quieter territory, the warm timber envelope framing direct views across the snow to the valley below. The spa pool takes a different tone entirely: arched niches lined in larch, columnar pilasters in bleached wood, and a fibre-optic ceiling constellation overhead that tips the atmosphere toward something closer to a Roman bathhouse than a mountain wellness suite.

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