Peter Zumthor | |
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 Zumthor at the16th Venice Biennale of Architecture in May 2018 | |
| Born | (1943-04-26)26 April 1943 (age 81) Basel, Switzerland |
| Occupation | Architect |
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Peter Zumthor (German pronunciation:[ˈpeːtɐˈtsuːmtoːɐ̯]; born 26 April 1943) is aSwissarchitect whose work is frequently described as uncompromising and minimalist.[1] Though managing a relatively small firm, he is the winner of the 2009Pritzker Prize and 2013RIBARoyal Gold Medal.
Zumthor was born inBasel, Switzerland. His father was a cabinet-maker, which exposed him to design from an early age and led him to become an apprentice for a carpenter later in 1958. He studied at theKunstgewerbeschule (arts and crafts school) in his native city starting in 1963.
In 1966, Zumthor studied industrial design and architecture as an exchange student atPratt Institute in New York. In 1968, he became conservationist architect for the Department for the Preservation of Monuments of thecanton ofGraubünden.[2] This work on historic restoration projects gave him a further understanding of construction and the qualities of different rustic building materials.
As his practice developed, Zumthor was able to incorporate his knowledge of materials intoModernist construction and detailing. His buildings explore the tactile and sensory qualities of spaces and materials while retaining aminimalist feel. It has been said that "Zumthor’s key building material is light."[3]
Zumthor founded his own firm in 1979. His practice grew quickly and he accepted more international projects.
Zumthor has taught atUniversity of Southern California Institute of Architecture and SCI-ARC in Los Angeles (1988), theTechnical University of Munich (1989),Tulane University (1992), and theHarvard Graduate School of Design (1999). Since 1996, he has been a professor at theAccademia di Architettura di Mendrisio.[4]
His best known projects are theKunsthaus Bregenz (1997), a shimmering glass and concrete cube that overlooksLake Constance (Bodensee) in Austria; the cave-like thermal baths inVals, Switzerland (1999); the Swiss Pavilion forExpo 2000 in Hannover, an all-timber structure intended to be recycled after the event; theKolumba Diocesan Museum (2007), in Cologne; and the Bruder Klaus Field Chapel, on a farm near Wachendorf.
In 1993, Zumthor won the competition for a museum and documentation center on the horrors of Nazism to be built on the site of Gestapo headquarters in Berlin. Zumthor's submission called for an extended three-story building with a framework consisting of concrete rods. The project, called theTopography of Terror, was partly built and then abandoned when the government decided not to go ahead for financial reasons. The unfinished building was demolished in 2004.[2]
In 1999, Zumthor was selected as the only foreign architect to participate in Norway's National Tourist Routes Project, with two projects, the Memorial in Memory of the Victims of the Witch Trials in Varanger, a collaboration withLouise Bourgeois (completed in 2010), and a rest area/museum on the site of an abandoned zinc mine.[5]
For theDia Art Foundation inBeacon, New York, Zumthor designed a gallery that was to house the360° I Ching sculpture byWalter de Maria; though the project was never completed. Zumthor is the only foreign architect to participate, with two projects,[citation needed] theMemorial in Memory of the Victims of the Witch Trials in Varanger, a collaboration withLouise Bourgeois (2011),[6] and a rest area/museum on the site of the abandoned Allmannajuvet zinc mines, in operation from 1882 to 1898, in Norway (2016).[7] In November 2009, it was revealed that Zumthor is working on a major redesign for the campus of theLos Angeles County Museum of Art.[8] Recently, he turned down an opportunity to consider a new library forMagdalen College, Oxford. He was selected to design theSerpentine Gallery's annual summer pavilion with designer Piet Oudolf in 2011.[9]In 2023, the Werkraum Haus – designed 10 years earlier by Zumthor – showed 40 of his architectural models, including some that have never been shown to the public before.[10]
Currently, Zumthor works out of his small studio with around 30 employees, inHaldenstein, near the city ofChur, inSwitzerland.[11]
In 1994, he was elected to theAcademy of Arts, Berlin. In 1996, he was made an honorary member of theBund Deutscher Architekten (BDA). In 1998, Zumthor received theCarlsberg Architectural Prize for his designs of theKunsthaus Bregenz in Bregenz, Austria and the Thermal Baths at Vals, Switzerland (see below). He won theMies van der Rohe Award for European Architecture in 1999. Recently, he was awardedPraemium Imperiale in (2008) and thePritzker Architecture Prize (2009). In 2012, he was awarded the RIBARoyal Gold Medal.[12] On the occasion of his 80th birthday in 2023, the F.A.Z. called Zumthor "the great magician of minimalism."[13]
Zumthor's work is largely unpublished in part because of hisphilosophical belief that architecture must be experienced first hand.[14] His published written work is mostlynarrative andphenomenological.
InThinking Architecture Peter Zumthor expresses his motivation in designing buildings that have an emotional connection and possess a powerful and unmistakable presence and personality. It is illustrated throughout with color photographs byLaura J. Padgett of Zumthor's new home and studio in Haldenstein.
To me, buildings can have a beautiful silence that I associate with attributes such as composure, self-evidence, durability, presence, and integrity, and with warmth and sensuousness as well; a building that is being itself, being a building, not representing anything, just being. The sense that I try to instil into materials is beyond all rules of composition, and their tangibility, smell, and acoustic qualities are merely elements of the language we are obliged to use. Sense emerges when I succeed in bringing out the specific meanings of certain materials in my buildings, meanings that can only be perceived in just this way in this one building. When I concentrate on a specific site or place for which I am going to design a building, when I try to plumb its depths, its form, its history, and its sensuous qualities, images of other places start to invade this process of precise observation: images of places I know and that once impressed me, images of ordinary or special places places that I carry with me as inner visions of specific moods and qualities; images of architectural situations, which emanate from the world of art, or films, theater or literature.
Atmospheres is a poetics of architecture and a window into Zumthor's personal sources of inspiration. In nine short, illustrated chapters framed as a process of self-observation, Zumthor describes what he has on his mind as he sets about creating the atmosphere of his houses: images of spaces and buildings that affect him are every bit as important as particular pieces of music or books that inspire him.
From the composition and "presence" of the materials to the handling of proportions and the effect of light, this poetics of architecture enables the reader to recapitulate what really matters in the process of house design. In conclusion, Peter Zumthor has described what really constitutes an architectural atmosphere as "this singular density and mood, this feeling of presence, well-being, harmony, beauty...under whose spell I experience what I otherwise would not experience in precisely this way."
Therme Vals is the only book-length study of this singular building. It features the architect's original sketches and plans for its design as well asHélène Binet’s striking photographs of the structure. Architectural scholar Sigrid Hauser contributes essays on such topics as "Artemis/Diana," "Baptism," "Mikvah," and "Spring"—drawing out the connections between the elemental nature of the spa and mythology, bathing, and purity.
Annotations by Peter Zumthor on his design concept and the building process elucidate the structure's symbiotic relationship to its natural surroundings, revealing, for example, why he insisted on using locally quarried stone. Therme Vals's scenic design elements, and Zumthor's contributions to this book, reflect the architect's commitment to the essential and his disdain for needless architectural flourishes.[15]
Seeing Zumthor represents a unique collaboration between Zumthor and Swiss photographerHans Danuser, containing Danuser's images of buildings created by Zumthor. More than twenty years ago, in a milestone event of twentieth-century architectural photography, Danuser photographed, at Zumthor's invitation, two buildings: the protective structure built for archaeological excavations in Chur andSt Benedict's Chapel inSumvitg. When first shown in exhibition, those photos ignited a lively debate that has been revived with a recent exhibition of Danuser's photographs of Zumthor's most famous work, the spa at Therme Vals.Seeing Zumthor collects these three important series of Danuser's pictures and includes essays by leading art historians exploring the relationship between the two seemingly different disciplines or architecture and photography.[16]
In summer 2017, Peter Zumthor curated the exhibitionDear to Me[17] at the Kunsthaus Bregenz, marking the twentieth anniversary of one of his most famous designs. Part of the program were conversations with philosophers, curators, historians, composers, writers, photographers, collectors, and craftsmen that Zumthor had invited to contribute to the exhibition. His dialogues with them offer insights into the thoughts and practice of fascinating personalities. Together with his counterparts, he explores artistic preferences and practices, reasonings, as well as practical knowledge from artisanal experience. InDear to Me, Zumthor's equally serious and serene conversations with Anita Albus,Aleida Assmann,Marcel Beyer, Hélène Binet, Hannes Böhringer, Renate Breuss,Claudia Comte,Bice Curiger,Esther Kinsky, Ralf Konersmann, Walter Lietha, Olga Neuwirth, Rebecca Saunders,Karl Schlögel, Martin Seel, Rudolf Walli, andWim Wenders are collected in seventeen booklets held together in an exquisitely manufactured box.Wim Wenders will also make a film about Zumthor.[18]
Zumthor and his wife, Annalisa Zumthor-Cuorad, have three children.[2]
See theGerman Wikipedia for details.
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