The chalet, in the sense of the luxurious-romantic remote mountain hut in the “splendid isolation” of a sun-drenched winter landscape, is one of the more popular cliché images of Switzerland. The actual meaning of the term chalet (from Latin cala, sheltered place) is, however, simply a herdsman's hut or shelter. On many journeys through his adopted home, Patrick Lambertz has repeatedly encountered houses that escape the typical cliché of the Swiss chalet: houses grown old over the years.