Chapter I
As an architect who choses his clients as much as the clients chose him, Herr Zumthor is known for thinking through his projects in a long, almost meditative manner. He causes people to want to give their best. He makes it a unique situation to work with him. “I like to develop the use of the building together with the client, in a process, so that as we go along we become more intelligent.” He knows that he does things that all architects dream about, building only what he wants to. Yet, he takes full responsibly of the building in all aspects, as he believes there are no excuses. No matter the client and building regulations. His works differ from other architects, as he sets himself apart from his famous colleagues. His buildings aren’t flashy, maybe don’t even grab you from first glance, but they are conceived from the inside out, over many painstaking years. Zumthor runs a small office and doesn’t even delegate the choice of a door handle. He hasn’t taken on many projects, and most of the ones he has completed aren’t very big. He gives great importance to local culture and deep sensuality. He remarks that, “while his work is close to Le Corbusier because we share the same culture,” he wants to “make a design on the scale of Oscar Niemeyer”. The great Brazilian modernist of futuristic extravagance, isn’t too different from Zumthor. He has done only what he wants, this being known as both his virtue and burden. In this way he resembles the ethics of Louis Kahn, leaving behind only a handful of masterpieces rather than taking on everything he is offered. Born in Basel, Switzerland, in 1943, into a large Catholic family, he was set to follow his father’s footsteps as a master cabinetmaker. His apprenticeship as a craftsman taught him how to work with his hands, how to absorb the material and feel its essence. He attended Swiss school for applied arts, modulated after Bauhaus learning the basics of design, then studied industrial design in New York at Pratt Institute, never earning an architecture degree, becoming a point on 3
which he prides himself, with no need to rely on computers as students today. He currently resides in Haldenstein, Graubunden, a speck on the Swiss map, almost a recluse. His studio is a pair of buildings he designed himself: one wood, one quasi-monastic glass and concrete retreat, facing the Swiss sloping mountains. Working with clients, Zumthor enters into a relationship with the client, requiring Talmudic discussions and Job-like patience. Capable of not responding for weeks or months at the request of an appointment, Zumthor work takes patience, time, and great desire. It is his commitment to architectural Wahrheit, or truth, as his approach to the projects he selects as desire to fulfill the physical and emotional experience that a design can create. Zumthor’s best known projects are the Saint Benedict Chapel in Sumvitg, Switzerland of 1988, the thermal baths in Vals, Switzerland, completed in 1996, the Kunsthaus Bregenz, in Austria of 1997, and the Bruder Klaus chapel in Mechernich, Germany completed in 2007. At his museums and chapels, visitors respond not just to the look of the buildings, but the sounds, smells, and how the light filters through them. Everything is present, even the feel of the walls and floors. Zumthor describes it as, “beautiful silence that I associate with attributes such as composure, self-evidence, durability, presence and integrity, and with warmth and sensuousness as well.”