The serious tech nous behind CAAA by Pietro Catalano, amid the alpine lakes of central Switzerland, seems to belie its natural, sustainably driven ethos. The second restaurant of the self-taught chef highlights mountain lamb and fermented field fruits, local cheese and foraged truffles, and yet its design was bookended by AI and 3D printing.

Catalano hired Barcelona architect Carmelo Zappulla of External Reference to design the avant-garde Lucerne space and Zappulla responded by feeding prompts to Midjourney. The process saved hours of sketching, modelling, trialling, problem-solving and experimentation. Requests for ‘snow-capped roofs’ and ‘mountain landscapes’ returned a visual concept that mimics the feeling of dining at vertiginous heights. Zappulla used canny lighting and sleek ash furnishings with root-like legs to complement a framework that appears handmade yet was assembled from 3D-printed components with the help of industrial printing studio Lamáquina.

The rippling ceiling appears to grow out of trunk-like columns rooted in a marble floor as shiny as glacier ice. They obscure a high-performance kitchen built from stainless steel and glass, where the chef’s fermentation and preparation take place. Catalano calls his menu ‘a journey of surprise’, and he’s made sure the whole experience follows his lead.

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