Halfway up the Valais hillside at Crans-Montana, where the resort's centre gives way to stands of larch and spruce, a five-storey building carries two distinct faces: one gable end clad in white render with dark timber half-timbering and hand-painted alpine fauna — ibex, chamois, birds of passage — the other wrapped in weathered reclaimed wood that softens the structure into its forested surroundings. This is the Aida Hotel & Spa, an adults-only property whose exterior signals the design logic operating throughout: a deliberate layering of the folkloric and the contemporary, neither sacrificing sentiment for modernity nor allowing tradition to tip into kitsch. Inside, the material palette stays consistent and purposeful. Guest rooms are lined floor-to-ceiling in aged larch board — in warmer tones in some rooms, bleached silver-grey in others — with oak plank flooring and beds framed in reclaimed timber, the crisp white linen the only element working against the wood's warmth. The restaurant combines live-edge walnut tables, dry-stacked local stone walls, and exposed ceiling beams with wire-cage pendant lights that introduce an industrial note without disrupting the alpine mood, an open fireplace anchoring the room at its far end. Below, the spa pool is set within a double-height stone and timber vault, carved ceiling beams and a wrought-iron chandelier overhead, travertine paving surrounding the green-tiled water — a space that draws from the vocabulary of a Valais farmhouse cellar and arrives somewhere considerably more considered.

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