Over the next year and a half, Ms. Presenhuber visited the village several times, driving two and a half hours from her two-bedroom apartment in Zurich to a farmhouse she rented here. She loved the bucolic setting so much that she asked the farmer she was renting from if he would consider selling his house. Instead, he offered her the piece of land behind it.

Image Art by Valentin Carron hangs behind Charlotte Perriand furniture. Credit... Lorenzo Nencioni for The New York Times

A long negotiation ensued before they agreed on the terms of the sale for the 3,550-square-foot plot in 2006. Meanwhile, Ms. Presenhuber invited Andreas Fuhrimann and Gabrielle Hächler, friends from Zurich who are architects, to see the site.

By the time the sale was final, the architects had finished designing the 2,150-square-foot three-story house with three bedrooms, and construction was completed in 2007. (The total cost of the land and the construction was 1.3 million Swiss francs, or about $1.275 million.)

Ms. Presenhuber initially told Mr. Fuhrimann and Ms. Hächler that she wanted something distinctive, but she left the details to them.

“I told them: ‘Do what you want. If you want a house with an architect’s signature, that’s what you have to do,’ ” Ms. Presenhuber said. The only thing she changed was to increase the number of bedrooms from two to three.