When Stefan Holzer, a 36-year-old clerk at a mountain-sports store in the German-speaking, Alpine Italian town San Candido, finally decided to move out of his parents’ house (Italians often stay at home until marriage), he did so in a rather unorthodox way. Instead of whimpering through a tearful goodbye and hitting up Mom and Dad for the cost of a U-Haul, Holzer convinced them to give him the top floor of their traditional mountain abode. But in lieu of just moving the TV upstairs, Holzer held an architecture competition, eventually choosing Plasma Studio—based in London, England and Sesto, Italy—to design a new living space, which was completed last fall.

Though the black steel and exposed timber of the Esker House, as it was dubbed, is a radical departure from the modest white-and-wood façades of its neighbors, it has everything to do with the majestic milieu of the Dolomites: An esker, a term typically reserved for paleogeologists, is a serpentine ridge of gravelly and sandy drifts formed by glacial streams.

“It really stands between the mountains and the urban environment,” says Plasma Studio architect Ulla Hell, who’s native to the area. The central spine of the roof slopes down toward the spacious deck, both as a reference to the surrounding mountains and as a practical drainage measure. The Esker House’s segmented exoskeleton only enhances what Plasma Studio saw as a “parasite” effect (one wonders if Herr und Frau Holzer felt the same way). “Stefan wanted something different from the traditional house,” says Hell. “He personally expressed a dislike for any kind of conventional roof geometry.” How did the elder Holzers hold up during construction? “They were very patient,” Stefan reports.