Atmospheres and Construction: Peter Zumthor's Philosophy on Architecture

Atmospheres and Construction Peter Zumthor's Philosophy On Architecture 2018

Lene Steinsland Kvinge

“

For me, architecture is not primarily about form, not at all. We actually never talk about form in the office. We talk about construction, we can talk about science, and we talk about feelings [...]

From the beginning the materials are there, right next to the desk […] when we put materials together, a reaction starts [...] this is about materials, this is about creating an atmosphere, and this is about creating architecture.

”

- Peter Zumthor

Image left: Therme Vals Photo:Fernando Guerro Image right: Kolumba Museum Photo: Rasmus Hortshøj

Top image: Early sketch of the Therme Vals Drawing: Peter Zumthor Bottom image: Zumthor and his sketches of House of The Mosaics Photo: Giovanna Fontana Antonelly

About the Architect

Awards and merits

1987 Auszeichnung guter Bauten im Kanton Graubünden 1989 Heinrich Tessenow Medal, Technische Universität Hannover 1991 Glulam, European Wiid-glue prize 1992 Internationaler Architekturpreis für Neues Bauen in

den Alpen, Graubünden 1993 Best Building award, Swiss tc's 10vor10, Graubünden 1994 Auszeichnung guter Bauten im Kanton Graubünden 1995 International Prize for Stone Architecture, Fiera di Verona 1995 Internationaler Architekturpreis für Neues Bauen in

den Alpen, Graubünden 1996 Erich-Schelling-Preis für Architektur, Erich-Schelling-Stiftung 1998 Carlsberg Architecture Prize 1999 Mies Van der Rohe Award for European

Architecture for Bregenz Art Museum 2006 Spirit of Nature Wood Architecture Award 2006 Thomas Jefferson Foundation Medal in

Architecture, University of Virginia 2008 Arnold W. Brunner Memorial Prize in Architecture,

The American Academy of Arts and Letters 2008 Praemium Imperiale, Japan Arts Association 2009 Pritzker Prize 2013 RIBA Royal Gold Medal

Peter Zumthor was born in Basel, Switzerland, in 1943. His father was a cabinet-maker and exposed him to design early in life. Zumthor, himself, later trained as a cabinet maker (1958-1962), before he started to study at the Kunstgewerbeschule in his hometown in 1963. In 1967 he finished his design and architecture studies at Pratt Institute in New York.

He established his own office in 1979 in Haldenstein, Switzerland. He still works and lives there with his wife. Together they have three adult children. He has kept his practice relatively small which means he can be more hands on involved with all the elements and aspects of planning and constructing a building.

In 1967, he was employed by the Canton of Graubünden in Switzerland as a conservationist architect at the Department for the preservation of Monuments. At the same time he was realizing some restorations of his own. This work might be a part of what have given him an understanding of the qualities of different materials, as well as understanding construction. Later he was able to use this knowledge in his projects, while still keeping within modernist construction and detailing.

Since 1988 he has been a professor, teaching and lecturing at different universities. This includes University of Southern California Institute of Architecture (1988),SCI-ARC in Los Angeles(1988), the Technische Universität in Munich (1989) and the Graduate School of Design, Harvard University (1999) as well as . He has since 1996 also been a professor at the Academy of Architecture, Universitá della Svizzera Italiana in Mendrisio.

Image: Serpentine Gallery Pavillion 2011 Photo: Walter Herfst

Atmospheres and Construction Peter Zumthor's Philosophy On Architecture

Zumthor believes that architecture needs to be appreciated first hand.

“In order to design buildings with a sensuous connection to life, one must think in a way that goes far beyond form and construction”. Peter Zumthor strongly believes in the atmosphere of a building.

The way it is experienced. He says buildings has to move him, to have a presence. That is why he usually designs his buildings from the inside out, and usually over many years. Like with Therme Vals, he compares the process of designing the building to something John Cage said in a lecture. “I am not a composer who hears music in my mind and then attempts to write it down. I have another way of operating.” Zumthor then says “He works out concepts and structures and then has them performed to find out how they sound.” The answers to the basic questions relating to the site, the materials, and the purpose of the building are what make structures and spaces emerge. A building should not be designed to find a special form, but to give a special feeling. To have a special soul. An atmosphere.

His book Atmospheres is a printed version of a lecture he held on June 1st 2003 at “Wege durch das land”, a Festival of Literature and Music in Germany. In this lecture he tries to give an answer to the questions “What is it that we mean when we speak of architectural quality?” “How do people design a building that move me every single time?” His answer to this is simply “Atmosphere”. But then comes the question “what is “Magic of the Real”?” What is it that moves us with things, the magic of the real world?

As previously mentioned, Peter Zumthor believes a building should have an atmosphere. For him atmosphere is an aesthetic category and there are a series of factors he uses that help him design with this thought in mind.

“The body of Architecture” is one of them. The different materials, the different layers of a building, the different components that creates a body, a space. The architecture as a bodily mass. “A body that can touch me”. Meaning, the physical elements architecture is built up by.

Material Compatibility is important in Peter Zumthor’s approach to architecture. The different amounts of materials. Of course he chooses materials carefully, but he also discusses the amount of the different materials. He tests them, discusses them and then do it over if it isn’t to his liking. Materials radiates with one another, they react to each other. Each and every material has endless possibilities depending on how you use them. How you process them. I guess this is part of the reason why it takes a certain amount of time for him to complete a building. That being said, this is exactly what is important to him. He doesn’t let anybody tell him how to design, to tell him what he should build. He is a very stubborn man, which he has said himself as well.

“Listen! Interiors are like large instruments, collecting sound, amplifying it, transmitting it elsewhere. That has to do with the shape peculiar to each room and with the surface of materials they contain, and the way those materials have been applied.” The sound of a space closely paired with the surfaces used in each space. The special form of a room. How the materials have different sounds depending on how they have been paired together. Peter Zumthor also talks about a different type of sound. The sound you associate with a room, a feeling of what a certain room should be. A lively chatter between friends. A door that closes. The feeling of a building that tell us to feel at home. The sound not merely associated directly with materials, but to the proportions the composition.

The temperature of a room is important. Not only in the way the materials radiate direct heat or cold, the physical, but also in the psychological sense. “It’s in what I see, what I feel, what I touch, even with my feet.” Wood might be perceived as a warm material psychologically, but when it’s warm outside, a wooden building might still be cooler inside than outside, even if it’s open to the air. While steel usually is perceived as a cold material - a material that is cold and drags the temperature down. Ergo, the essence of the temperature of a room while Zumthor designs, might be described as searching for the right mood.

The surrounding objects, the objects that have nothing to do with us as architects taking place in a building. They give an insight into the future of the building

Image left: Bruder Klaus Field Chapel Photo: Aldo Amoretti Image right: Bruder Klaus Field Chapel Photo: HÊlène Binet

and therefore helps Zumthor to imagine the rooms in use. It helps him design them.

When Zumthor designs architecture the movement is important. The movement of people, the way architecture involves movement is like a “temporal art” like Zumthor says it himself. For example in The Therme Vals it was important for the architect to motivate a sense of freedom when moving between different spaces. To seduce rather than simply directing. Seduce with light, with darkness, with different materials, sizes of rooms - make people letting go and saunter on, not necessarily just looking for the right door. “Between Composure and Seduction” like Zumthor explains it.

The tensions between Interior and Exterior is used actively for Zumthor to create thresholds, crossings, the in-between, the transition space. The little space just before we are inside a building or just before we are out on the streets. The arena where a building makes a statement of what the world is supposed to see of of it. As the buildings way of saying “What do I want to make public and what do I want to keep private?”

Peter Zumthor strives to make buildings where the interior empty space and the outdoor form isn’t the same. Where walls isn’t just a standard wall with a certain thickness all through a building. He uses different thickness, density and proportions of materials to create an internal mass. An interior that isn’t just a line on a paper defining outside and inside, but a feeling of a mass. The levels of intimacy that

comes with distances, size and proximity.

Zumthor uses light actively when he creates a space, or an atmosphere. He usually uses two different approaches, one of them being to plan a building as a total mass of shadow and put in light afterwards. “To put in light as you were hollowing out the darkness, as if the light were a new mass seeping in”. This is apparent in several of his projects. For instance like the narrow light slits in the roof of the Therme Vals or the light seeping in from the top of the walls in the Saint Benedict Chapel. The other way he uses light is to choose materials in relation to how they reflect light. And then fit them together with each other on the basis of that knowledge. Both these approaches uses the daylight as much as possible, which is exactly what Zumthor takes advantage of when designing buildings.

While Zumthor preaches that form shouldn’t be designed to have a special form, that doesn’t mean that he can’t appreciate form. On the contrary. “The beautiful Form” is what he thinks of as what you see when you finally step back from your work.

Something you could never have imagined as the outcome from the start, but simply comes from a well designed atmosphere, and approach. “But if, at the end of the day, the thing does not look beautiful, if the form doesn’t move me, then I’ll go back to the beginning and start again.”

“Music needs to be performed. Architecture needs to be executed. Then it’s body can come into being. And this body is always sensuous.” In Peter Zumthor’s studio there are no cardboard models.

Image: Shelter for Roman Excavations Photo: Hélène Binet

They work directly with the materials in question.

Concrete things, objects. The concrete objects are constructed first, and then they are drawn to scale.

This correlates directly to his idea about materials and construction is some of the most important factors when designing and making architecture with an atmosphere. An atmosphere that belongs to a special place.

Peter Zumthor has on numerous occasions pointed out the importance of place. The importance of the site. In his book Thinking Architecture he has in his own words described a philosophy of architecture. Or rather many thoughts on philosophy. In the essay titled: "A way of looking at things", one of his thoughts is as follows: “I believe that architecture today needs to reflect on the tasks and possibilities which are inherently its own. Architecture is not a vehicle or a symbol for things that do not belong to its essence. In a society that celebrates the inessential, architecture can put up a resistance, counteract the waste of forms and meanings, and speak its own language. I believe that the language of architecture is not a question of a specific style. Every building is built for a specific use in a specific place and for a specific society. My buildings try to answer the questions that emerge from these simple facts as precisely and critically as they can.” In this way he shows us his approach concerning use of materials, building methods and the place itself. The site. The community he is building for. It is widely known that he often uses local materials and local building methods. He is striving for his architecture to be grounded in the place it sits. To belong in the l andscape.

It is not hard to find examples of this in his built work.

The most obvious one is perhaps the Therme Vals in the village of Vals in a valley in the Swiss Alps. The architect talks about the project’s inspiration as “Mountain, stone, water, building in stone, building with stone, building into the mountain”. It is clear that this is exactly what he did. The building itself lies in

a hillside, surrounded by mountains - stone - exactly what the building is made from. The building is detached from the rest of the hotel complex from the 60’s, connected only with a subterranean passage.

This gives the therme a more clear and precise role in relation to the rest of the landscape. It shows us a special relationship with the surroundings - the powerful topography, the mountain landscape, the geological aspect as well as the power of nature. The use of local gneiss, piled on top of each other to give the connecting rooms, the baths, a cave-like feeling.

Like it was carved out of a single stone. A heavy, rigid expression But also one that frames the landscape from the inside as you move closer to the east facade. On the other hand, when you look at the baths from further up the hillside, the building almost disappears. The only thing you see is the green roof, like a field of grass that belongs in the landscape.

Important for Zumthor is details. He has said that he has the utmost respect for the details, and the way the different parts of a building are joined together.

That “the real core of all architectural work lies in the act of construction”. It is important for him to try and design buildings that are worthy of these abilities, and that celebrates the challenges of these skills, not working against them. Furthermore there is a will to design buildings that consists of joins with quality.

That the finished building’s (or object’s) quality, largely is determined by the quality of the joins it holds. Like in the Therme Vals, the walls, floor and stairs are carefully constructed of the same gneiss, modeled after old retaining walls. One stone on top of the other, thus creating a stronger feeling of the building being carved out of one block of stone. This technique has even been dubbed “Vals composite masonry”. The detail in this work is fascinating. The lines of the stones perfectly mimicking with the surface of the water. The very subtle change of texture in the stones as they are submerged in the water. Nothing left to chance, but carefully planned in the celebration for the art of construction.

Image: Saint Benedict Chapel Photo: Felipe Camus Image right: "The Swiss Sound Box" the Swiss Pavilion for the World Expo Hanover in 2000 Photo: Unknown

When Peter Zumthor talks about architecture, people have a tendency to get drawn in. I find it allconsuming and hard not to listen and be inspired. He has a way with words - the way he describes architecture and phenomena in architecture is truly inspiring. Like Annika Staudt, an employee of Zumthor, said about his the Swiss Sound Box after she had visited as a teenager: “I went with my school and everything else there looked fake, but in his pavilion you could actually feel the wood, you could smell it, and you could see the steel in between, and it was all very mysterious, but real. So after that I read what he had written. And the way he described things seemed totally familiar, as if I had known what he was saying, but never said it myself - about the noises things make, the experience of touching things,

walking through them.” I feel the same way. It is like he has caught the essence, the very core of the experience I have had while visiting some of his buildings.

This is a man who is genuinely passionate about his work and have strong beliefs about how to execute it.

He knows how to use his knowledge and experiences about materials and detailing to get a certain expression and feeling of a room. To achieve a certain atmosphere. He has a poetic dimension to the way he designs buildings. This gives the people exploring his buildings, the audience, a way of recognize and relate to his buildings. Whether it’s a feeling of serenity, a powerful feeling, a feeling of something familiar and safe, he largely has it covered.

Image left: Therme Vals Image right: Therme Vals Photos: HÊlène Binet

Image left: Therme Vals Image right: Therme Vals Photos: HÊlène Binet

Image left: Kolumba Museum Photo: Unknown Image right: Kolumba Museum Photo: Rasmus Hortshøj

Image left: Allmannajuvet Zinc Mines, exterior Image right: Allmannajuvet Zinc Mines, interior Photos: Aldo Amoretti

Sources

Zumthor, Peter. 2010. Thinking Architecture. Basel: Birkhäuser Verlag GmbH. Zumthor, Peter. 2006. Atmospheres: Architectural Environments - Surrounding Objects. Basel: Birkhäuser Verlag GmbH. El Croquis. 1998. Worlds One: Towards The End of The 20th Century Nr. 88/89. Madrid: El Croquis Editorial.

Kimmelman, Michael. 2011. “The Ascension of Peter Zumthor”. Nytimes.som, March 11th.

Accessed April 21st, 2018. https://www.nytimes. com/2011/03/13/magazine/mag-13zumthor-t.html Saieh, Nico. 2010. “Multiplicity and Memory: Talking About Architecture with Peter Zumthor.” Accessed April 21st, 2018. https://www.archdaily.com/85656/multiplicity-and-memory-talking-about-architecture-with-peter-zumthor Merin, Gili. 2013. “Peter Zumthor: Seven Personal Observations on Presence in Architecture.”

Accessed April 18th, 2018. https://www.archdaily.com/452513/peter-zumthor-seven-personal-observations-on-presence-in-architecture Zukowsky, John. 2018. “Peter Zumthor. Swiss Architect.” Accessed 27th March, 2018 https://www.britannica.com/biography/Peter-Zumthor Weinman, Rebecca. 2017. “Peter Zumthor: Austere Buildings With an Existential Purpose.” Accessed April 18th, 2018. https://theculturetrip.com/europe/germany/articles/ peter-zumthor-austere-buildings-with-an-existential-purpose/ Wikipedia. 2018. “Peter Zumthor.” Accessed 27th March, 2018. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Zumthor