Station de ski miniature en Suisse
Text and Portraits: Ruedi Flück, Photos: Gautier Pierrat and Solène Munch
The almost perfect model ski station from @stationdeskiminiatureensuisse is so real and fresh that it can hardly be matched by any model railroad. You have to be a bit crazy to spend your free time creating detailed model worlds. Behind this project are the model couple Gautier Pierrat and Solène Munch, 23 and 24 years old.
„“It’s not really the playing that interests us, but the building and creating.”“
Alsatian Gautier started building small ski resorts with Lego and Kappla in his room when he was around 5 years old out of a fascination for mountains and models. In Champéry, on a skiing vacation with his parents, he had a key experience when he saw a model gondola lift in a store and was allowed to buy it. From that moment on, there was only one type of present for Christmas and birthdays: model chairlifts, model gondola lifts, model snow groomers; always for the small ski area in his children's room.
In the meantime, not only has Gautier grown, but so have his ambitions for his model world. His ski area has moved from his children's room to his parents' vacation apartment in Vercorin in Valais, where it is now set up in the garden for the winter season. During the summer, the entire system is stored in a cupboard that is bursting at the seams: 5-6 cable cars, 20 snow groomers, 50 snow cannons, countless small spotlights and fir trees as well as little skiers.
Solène has made a significant contribution to the success of the project in recent years. It was her idea to open the website, which was initially only available on Facebook, on Instagram because more interest could be found there. That was in November 2023 and in just one season, the two have already achieved success: Their videos generated around 2 million views last winter.
It takes 2-5 days to set up a ski resort, so Gautier and Solène have to think carefully about the weather in which they tackle the construction. With a scale ratio of 1:32 of the models to reality, 10 cm of fresh snow is enough to make the small figures disappear.
Many of the figures are bought from the relevant dealers or online, but Gautier models and prints many individual parts and entire objects himself using a 3D printer. As an architecture student, he knows his way around modeling. Unfortunately, the power of the remote-controlled snow groomer is not enough to move snow and level slopes. These are always made by hand beforehand and the moving machine is only staged for the video. Unfortunately, the Austrian manufacturer of snow groomers has not yet expressed any interest in working with Gautier and Solène or realizing product placements, despite the wide reach of their Instagram page with over 10,000 followers.
After Rhône FM did a report on the couple in January 2024, the director of the Vercorin mountain railroads suddenly became interested. “We didn't think about advertising the ski resort at all, but we didn't expect it to be so successful and simply stuck stickers, which we collected, on the ski lifts,” says Gautier. It remains to be seen whether they will be able to advertise for Vercorin, other ski resorts or producers of models.
„“There are lots of people who contact us on Instagram and ask if they can pay us a visit. Unfortunately, we always have to turn down such requests.”“
They are keeping the exact address in Vercorin a secret because otherwise it would be too much if visitors were constantly stomping around in the garden. Together with the Vercorin mountain railroads, they have planned a small exhibition in the ski resort for March 2025, which will be the only opportunity so far for fans to visit the model ski resort. The exact date will be published on their channel.
Either way, it's worth marveling at the perfectly staged pictures on the Instagram channel. The model couple invests a lot of time in a perfect depiction of their world. The pictures are aesthetically pleasing and play with the perception of reality - so good that someone even asked on Facebook whether they had work in the ski resort in winter.
The photo with the auroras and the caption “Our machinist just sent us this picture, you can see auroras in the Swiss sky!” was then tricked with image processing and published on April 1.
The world often seems different than it is. A bit of illusion and deception, as embodied in the ideal world of Gautier and Solène, can only do us good.
