Architect Peter Zumthor : ‘I had to learn that failing goes with the job’

“Images, moods, a feeling for the place,” Peter Zumthor said in an interview, when asked what inspires him.

Born on April 26, 1943, Zumthor grew up near Basel. Following an apprenticeship as a cabinet maker, he studied interior design and architecture at the School of Applied Arts in Basel and the Pratt Institute in New York.

In 1979, after working as a building and planning consultant for canton Graubünden in eastern Switzerland, Zumthor established his own practice in Haldenstein, where he still works.

He was a professor at the University of Italian-speaking Switzerland’s Academy of Architecture from 1996-2008 and has also held visiting professorships at several international universities, including the Harvard Graduate School of Design.

He has received numerous prizes, including the Mies van der Rohe Award for European Architecture (1998), Japan’s Praemium Imperiale (2008), the Pritzker Architecture Prize, often called the “Nobel Prize of architecture”, (2009) and the Royal Institute of British Architects’ Royal Gold Medal (2012).

In 2017, he received the lifetime award from the Association of German Architects, the first non-German to receive the prize. “His consistent focus on the idea of light, material and space – plus his meticulous attention to detail and quality – give his work a timeless relevance,” the association said. 

Despite the accolades, Zumthor has said he aims to create buildings that become part of everyday life so that even people who don’t consider their architectural merit can enjoy them.

Peter Zumthor turns 75: a dip into atmospheric architecture. By Thomas Kern (picture editor), Thomas Stephens (text). Swissinfo, 2018

Peter Zumthor, the Swiss architect behind the new Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), explains how hard it is to accept democratic processes.

Besides his work on LACMA, he is planning his first high-rise in Belgium. On July 1, Zumthor was awarded this year's prestigious BDA Grand Award  in Germany.

This is what the German jury for the BDA prize had to say about the Swiss architect: "His work takes architecture back to humanity's 'original creations'." Better than anyone, it says, this self-confident hermit knows "what building and sheltering originally meant". Zumthor has also won the coveted Pritzker prize for architecture. . His commitment to quality and attention to detail, they say, "give his work timeless validity".

SRF: What inspires you?

Peter Zumthor: Images, moods, a feeling for the place. That also includes listening, finding out what the client wants and what the assignment requires. And picking up discordant elements as well. Sometimes I have to ask: Is that really what you want? Naturally I always take great pleasure in location. Building houses that contribute to the quality of the location just by being there, that somehow improve or endorse it: that is my great passion. Perhaps even making something visible that had been lost to sight, a piece of the location’s lost history.

SRF: How about building bridges? Would that also be something you could do?

P.Z.: I can't, but I love bridges. I've just seen a picture of the new Tamina Bridge, a lovely arch bridge. I'd love to design buildings with the same logic. With the loveliness that is created by the logic of their design. The building in Los Angeles that I'm currently working on has something of a huge bridge about it, with its enormous pillars. That’s why I’m working on it in close cooperation with engineers. It's a fantastic collaboration, because we talk about the building's structure and statics.

SRF: There's an interplay of light and shade in your buildings that you call "calm space". What's that?

P.Z.: Sometimes you come across films or books that make you feel the author is constantly showing off how great he is. That's not my style. I like to blend into the background, so that people come to love the building as time passes.

SRF: What aspect of project work do you most enjoy?

P.Z.: Building is great. Watching 20, 200 or 2,000 people create something, seeing how all their skills are needed – that makes me proud. And the pleasure it gives me is like that of a conductor able to work with a variety of instruments. The beginning is lovely too. It's always the initial idea that's most exciting. And that excitement is what keeps you going as an architect throughout a long process, a process that you must get through no matter what difficulties you encounter along the way.

SRF: How do you deal with failure?

P.Z.: I had to learn that failing goes with the job. Nobody told me that. There are awful moments. When I had to watch the first stair towers of the Topography of Terror museum in Berlin being demolished, I had tears in my eyes. And I sometimes despair of certain Swiss democratic processes.

SRF: One of your key works is the Vals spa complex. Your attempt to buy it was unsuccessful: the municipal assembly accepted another offer. What do you think of that now?

P.Z.: In retrospect, I'm glad it didn't come off.

SRF: The plan now is for a 300-metre tower by Thom Mayne in Vals. What do you think of this project?

P.Z.: Thom Mayne is a good, interesting architect. Twenty-five years ago, we taught together at a university in Los Angeles. I was most impressed by him. He often used to say things in response to criticism that I didn't understand at all – and when I looked round, I could see that our colleagues and the students didn't understand what he meant either. Los Angeles has several fantastic buildings of his. But this commission [for the Vals tower] involves a setting he is totally unfamiliar with. A gigantic tower in a mountain village? I have to say no.

SRF: A project for a music hotel in Braunwald was recently turned down by the municipal assembly, and it's now hanging in the balance. What do you think of that?

P.Z.: It's the same problem: you have to be patient. The vote wasn't about the hotel itself, it was about the water plan – though the two were connected. The town now has the opportunity to put the project back on the rails, and in an improved form. I still believe in it.

SRF: You are currently working on the LACMA, a $600 million project scheduled to begin construction next year. How do you handle your activities abroad? Is it all done from your office in the village of Haldenstein in Graubünden?

P.Z.: First: I need clients who enjoy working with me through a process that will give us more knowledge at the end than we had at the beginning. I don't implement existing ideas. I need people who get their kicks from developing something together. That's what I have in Los Angeles, and elsewhere too. There's no other way.

Second: communication has become incredibly easy. I can send the largest plan flyers to Los Angeles or New York simply by pressing a button. Putting a large team together is wonderfully simple too. It doesn't matter where you are. The architect has to be in a place where he can do good work, and for me that's Haldenstein.

SRF: You work like a small architectural practice. Every project goes through you.

P.Z.: I create architectonic originals. I can't deliver things under a company name. I enjoy inventing buildings down to the last screw. But they don't have to be small, they can also be large.

SRF: Does a relationship persist between you and the building?

P.Z.: It may be like with children. But they belong to other people. I can't visit them, I can't simply go there even though I'd like to. I'd have to go there in secret or at night. But there's also fear of contact. I don't like being in places where people look at me and whisper: look, that's Zumthor.

SRF: In 2009 you were awarded the Pritzker Prize for your life's work, the highest accolade an architect can achieve. What effect did that have on you?

P.Z.: It helped me to be even calmer. Throughout my career, I could never complain about not being recognized. I always have been. There have always been people who saw what I was doing and what was important to me. And there have always been others who stuck a label on me: Zumthor – difficult, pig-headed. You just have to put up with it.

SRF: Did this recognition put you under pressure to perform at the same level?

P.Z.: No, the Pritzker Prize is just the wrapping. On the inside, nothing has changed. Inventing every building from the ground up, pursuing the idea to the very end and putting it into practice in the construction sector as well as politically and culturally – it always starts at square one, and it's always the same challenge. That doesn't change. Once again, I'm uncertain, once again I haven't a clue, and I say: "Damn it, something's not right, what's the matter?" And I talk to my people about it.

SRF: Even before you were awarded this prize, people talked of you as a "star architect".

P.Z.: I don't like that. I have absolutely no pretensions to stardom. The existence of star architects does architecture no good. I'd prefer it if there were star plumbers.

SRF: Art galleries, sacred buildings, spas, barracks: is there anything else that Peter Zumthor would like to design?

P.Z.: At the moment, we're looking at whether we can build a high-rise in the south of Antwerp. The problem with all high-rises is that they don't know how to deal with people at the base, or how they should be entered. We want to find a solution that will benefit both the town and the park. I'd like to build something on the shore, with a wide horizon.

SRF: And when you decide you don't want to carry on, will that mean the end of the Peter Zumthor architectural practice?

P.Z.: I don't want to compare myself with Alberto Giacometti, but since his death there have been no more Giacomettis.

 Architect Peter Zumthor : ‘I had to learn that failing goes with the job’ By Silvio Liechti, Radio SRF. Swissinfo , July 7, 2017

Of interest :

Therme Vals spa has been destroyed says Peter Zumthor. By Jessica Mairs. Dezeen ,  May 11 ,  2017

Peter Zumthor releases latest LACMA renderings after $150 million funding boost. By Dan Howarth. Dezeen ,  November 1,  2017 

Peter and Annalisa Zumthor have just returned from a seven-hour hike across the mountains and valleys of southern Switzerland and are winding down with the neighbours over a bottle of wine. It’s quite normal for Swiss folk to embark on such a trek on the weekends, and the walks are one of the reasons why the Zumthors built themselves a second home in the hamlet of Leis, a treacherous 2km road journey from Vals, the famous spa town. All around are snow-topped mountains, shadowy pine forests, tinkling streams and patchworks of wild flowers. Zumthor ambles over to the picture window in the kitchen to show off the view. He spots a cluster of black insect eggs on the glass and stops to examine them for a minute or two: ‘Beautiful, non?’ he says, before shrugging his shoulders at the splendour of it all. Nature informs a large proportion of his work – nature and the way man responds to it – and of all the places in which to seek inspiration, it doesn’t get much better than here.

His house, or rather, houses (there are actually two of them, but one is rented out) stand one above the other on a tricky mountainside plot. He fondly refers to them as ‘a brother and a sister’. They are a modern interpretation of the 18th-century timber houses that define Leis, without the bad bits. ‘The old houses have tiny windows and you can’t stand in the bedrooms,’ says the 6ft-plus Zumthor who designed his houses with vast windows and high ceilings that will accommodate those above Hobbit height.

Swiss law insisted on traditional slate roofs, which he paired with sleek metal chimneys, guttering and drainpipes. ‘Also,’ continues Zumthor, ‘wood shrinks. The cupboards and doors and stairs need to know that the walls holding them up will shrink, so I had to build in a tolerance for this. It was very complicated,’ he says, stroking the spots where the pine beams have already developed hairline splits now that the house is almost two years old. ‘I’m not worried. I expected it.’

‘During the night you can hear the house move,’ adds Annalisa, for whom, in a touchingly romantic gesture, the houses were built. The couple have been married for 39 years and have three children and three grandchildren. ‘In the early days, when we went on holiday in Italy or elsewhere, we were always hunting for a place we could turn into a holiday home,’ says Annalisa. ‘I had always wanted to live in a wooden house, and while I was director of the thermal baths in Vals [which her husband also built], I came across the plot.’Her husband then set about sourcing an elaborate array of woods for the houses: combinations of local pine for the exteriors, Canadian maple for the floors, Swiss maple for the ceilings, birch for the cabinetry, German teak in the bathrooms and, for Annalisa’s walk-in wardrobe, a knotty mountain wood from her home valley, ‘which has a special smell that reminds her of her childhood.’ On the façade of each house is an abstract motif inspired by the traditional carvings of birds and flowers that appear on the beams of old local houses.

Inside architect Peter Zumthor’s wooden holiday home in the Swiss Alps. By Emma O’Kelly.

Wallpaper, December 13, 2012

Swiss architect Peter Zumthor has completed his Secular Retreat – a Living Architecture holiday home designed to celebrate the landscape like the villas of his hero, Andrea Palladio.

The house, which has been more than 10 years in the making, is Zumthor's first permanent building in the UK. It is located on a hilltop in South Devon, England, where it commands an impressive view of the surrounding countryside. Zumthor designed the house to be built from concrete rammed by hand – a technique that gives stripes to the walls, both inside and out.

The thickness of this material is revealed by the large, deep window openings, designed to take full advantage of the setting.

“I would like to say I'm building here in the tradition of Andreo Palladio," said Zumthor during a tour of the building. "I don't want to compare myself with this Renaissance architect, who has always been a favourite of mine, but what he did was build villas for the summertime."

Zumthor said his aim was to emulate "the incredible presence of materials, and the beautiful command of space, light and shadow" of Palladio's designs. "I think it is beautiful if you can make a strong building that helps you, not which oppresses you," he said.

Secular Retreat is the seventh house built for Living Architecture, a property rental company set up by writer Alain de Botton to offer people the opportunity to rent a house designed by a renowned architect. It was actually one of the first to be commissioned. But it took far longer to be completed than any of the others, which include MVRDV's Balancing Barn, John Pawson's Life House and A House for Essex by FAT and Grayson Perry.

One reason for the long delay is the level of detail and craftsmanship that went into the building.

The rammed concrete walls had to be created in layers – each line marks a day's work – while the limestone floors were designed in a bespoke pattern, tailored exactly to suit the dimensions of every slab that came from the quarry. Every broken slab resulted in a rework. "I have this concept – I produce originals," Zumthor told Dezeen. "My work is always my work, it is not the work of my collaborators. I am not a trademark, I always produce an original."

The layout of the house is very simple, all organised on one storey. There are two wings – one containing two bedrooms, the other containing three – and each bedroom has its own en-suite bathroom. Where the two wings meet is a generous living space, including a bespoke kitchen, a lounge area surrounding a fireplace, plus a couple of quiet seating areas where occupants can enjoy solitary activities like reading or listening to music.

Almost all of the furniture was designed by Zumthor, including the wooden dining table, seating upholstered in purple fabric and camel-hued leather, and the small pink stools in the bedrooms.

Overhead, the concrete roof sits appears to hover just above the concrete columns, raised by a concealed steel structure within. Its surface is coloured by the wooden formwork that the concrete was cast against – an effect that Zumthor said he hated initially, but has grown to love.

"You have a central communal space under a big roof, and you have five bedrooms each with their own bath," said the architect. "So in the back it is like a hotel, and here it's all together, you cook, you do everything together."

Zumthor famously keeps his studio small and turns down many commissions offered to him. He rarely builds single houses – most of his previous projects are public buildings, such as the Therme Vals spa in Switzerland, the Zinc Mine Museum in Norway and the Brother Klaus Field Chapel in Germany. He said he couldn't resist this opportunity to build on this site. "It's easy to build a nice house here," he said.

The building sits on the site of a demolished house from the 1940s. A few details from the old property remain – a hexagonal patio beyond the kitchen, and a set of Monterey pine trees that are now 20 metres tall. But Zumthor claims his house will age much better than its predecessor: "This building frames view and celebrates the place, the old building did not."

The house will be available for short-term lets later this year. The architect is also hoping to convince Living Architecture to change the name, from Secular Retreat to Chivelstone House. "I would prefer it!" he said.

Peter Zumthor completes Devon countryside villa "in the tradition of Andrea Palladio" By Amy Frearson  Dezeen ,  October  29, 2018 

Architects may be limited in their power to prevent climate change, says Peter Zumthor, but they can help by designing buildings to last for centuries rather than decades.

Zumthor spoke to Dezeen on a tour of his recently completed Secular Retreat villa – a concrete and glass holiday home in Devon, England.

The tour took place shortly after the UN issued the warning that we have just 12 years to reverse the impact of global warming, to prevent global catastrophe.

The Swiss architect said the issue was on his mind, but that he didn't feel he had much power to make a difference.  "I am aware of these things, but I can only do so much," he said. "What I do, I do simple buildings," he continued. "In my modest way, it is a big concern."

  

One thing Zumthor said he tries to do, to make his buildings more sustainable, is to ensure that they will look and function in 100-200 years time. This was the case with Secular Retreat, he explained. "We started, in a way, by supposing that in 200 years time it is still in good condition," he explained. "It's the opposite of the fashion shop, changing its interior design every half year. In that sense, there's an ecological element."

"I think these materials we're using here produce a nice ruin," he added. "All the materials are very basic: wood, stone, steel. The only thing I don't know about here is the glass, how this three-layered glass will hold up. That's the price you pay to have large windows."

Another way that Zumthor tries to reduce his carbon footprint, he said, is by avoiding international travel whenever possible. The architect is based in Haldenstein, a mountain village in eastern Switzerland. As well as his UK villa, the architect's current projects abroad include an extension to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

 "It's also a big concern that I have to fly around the world to do my work," he told Dezeen."But what happens now is that modern IT helps me to avoid flights, so I can communicate with LA and New York and San Francisco at the same time, and we can look at the same plans at the same time." Peter Zumthor is one of the most respected architects in the world, known for buildings including the Therme Vals spa in Switzerland, the Zinc Mine Museum in Norway and the Brother Klaus Field Chapel in Germany. He was awarded the Praemium Imperiale in 2008, the Pritzker Prize in 2009 and the RIBA Gold Medal in 2013.

The architect is famously selective over the commissions he accepts, allowing him to keep his studio small. "I get asked to do lots of commercial work and I have to say no, in a friendly way," he said. To date, no building he has completed has been demolished

"I can only do so much" to protect the environment, says Peter Zumthor. By Amy Frearson. Dezeen ,  October 29,  2018.

Also of interest :

A Timely Remembrance For Witch Hunts Of The Past by Louise Bourgeois and Peter Zumthor.

A pilgrimage to visit Louise Bourgeois and Peter Zumthor’s Norwegian memorial made for victims of the witchcraft trials hits home. By Karen Gardiner, Hyperallergic ,  October 25, 2018.

A collaboration between the late artist Louise Bourgeois (1911 – 2010) and architect Peter Zumthor (1943 – ), the Steilneset Memorial (2011) commemorates the 91 people (77 women and girls, and 14 men) who were executed during the 17th-century trials, mostly by burning at the stake. More people in the Finnmark region — then home to only around 3,000 people or 0.8 percent of Norway’s population — were executed for witchcraft than anywhere else in Norway, which accounted for 19 percent of all Norwegian trials and 31 percent of all death sentences. The memorial sits on the very site, off the shore of the freezing Barents Sea, where it is believed the condemned were burned.

The memorial is made up of three components, art, architecture, and history. Zumthor’s 400-foot-long oak-floored pavilion — swathed in sailcloth and lit by light bulbs hanging in each of the 91 steel-framed windows — leads toward a steel and smoked-glass box. Inside, sits Bourgeois’s sculpture, “The Damned, The Possessed and The Beloved.”  It is unsparingly literal, a burning steel chair encircled above by large oval mirrors.