Ideas Come Naturally

Thank you. It’s a wonderful moment, of course, to get such a prize. There was a journalist, a couple of weeks ago back in Switzerland, asking me: “Now that you’re getting the biggest prize in architecture, will this change your life?” Then I said, “Of course not.” And then I added, “Maybe, I don’t know.” Maybe something will change, but I would like to say it wouldn’t. So, I’m a little bit older now—a couple of weeks older—and something has changed a little bit. Let me try to explain.

As you just heard, when I was a boy, there was no architecture. There were architects. Some of them my father liked, some of them he didn’t like. But architecture didn’t exist. Only later looking back I asked myself, was there architecture in my life? At first I thought, “I don’t see anything.” Perhaps just our house… But architecture? A school? I grew up in a village, in a town five kilometers outside of the city of Basel. So, I looked around, and there was not much. Keep in mind that this is me later looking back. And then all of a sudden, one Saturday evening, we took the little train and went to the movies. Then I started to remember there were all these movie theatres in the streets, and they had a beautiful kind of feeling. They had a beautiful feeling when you got in. There was a really marvelous world of kitsch, really marvelous. And when you went down to the bathroom, the colors were yellow and black. And then all of a sudden, I realized there were this and that, and the balustrades, which had polka dots—polka dot kind of holes—and so on. So, I imagined that this must have been architecture. It was something special. And then later, I remembered that once a year we went to a monastery, a baroque church, nearby. And there were monks singing Gregorian chants in this beautiful Baroque church. Architecture. And then—this was the best—at the end of the service, the family always went down into the rocks, and you came to a very small chapel built or excavated in the rocks. There were a lot of candles and those typical smells and all these things. Architecture! Architectural atmosphere! So, I was glad to discover it. There are other things, of course. But I was glad to discover there was architecture in my youth. I just didn’t know it.

A little bit later—10 years or 15 years—all of a sudden I decided that I wanted to become a real architect, which was sort of a lonely decision in the kitchen. And I started to do my work. I started to enter competitions. I won a competition. I did my first two buildings. The two buildings started to grow. And I remembered at the time we looked at these two buildings, Annalisa and I. I got really depressed. It was terrible. I saw the buildings, and I could see the models of the buildings. This was terrible. I could hear the architectural discussion of the time in my buildings. This was the last time that this should happen to me. The last time that I’m not being myself.

So what is this being myself? It is interesting that in these buildings, which gave me this headache, heart ache, there were things I liked, such as things that did not come from a magazine or from a discussion that I can talk about with somebody. Rather, this is me! What is this “me”? Of course, I don’t know exactly. But I can try to explain a little about the process of what I feel when this happens, when I have the feeling “this is me.” Maybe those of you who play tennis, you know. You have to concentrate on the ball. If you start to think just for a moment, “Oh, my friend is looking at how I play,” then you are lost, right? You have to keep this total concentration on what you want to do. This is one thing. The other thing is you have to be loose. Now, I’m talking about myself. I should say I have to be loose. I go to the place. I listen to the client. I walk around. I hang around. I’m not going to do research.

When I start to do research, I’m really bad. This I know from studying. No research. You are just hanging out, listening, feeling, having the place resonate a little bit. And then all of a sudden, ideas come naturally. I don’t know when and where. I think this is a very natural process. Everybody—all of you, all of us—we experience this. And what I discovered was that when I have these feelings, it is like being a boy again. All of a sudden, I think this is me when I was 10 years or 12 years old. I’m dreaming. I’m there and something comes to me, but it’s not, of course, naïve dreaming. Everything, which is part of my biography, is there. But it’s not there as a research product or as reference material. It went into me, as part of my life. Then it comes out from somewhere—from my emotions or whatever, my feelings.

So, I’m at the same place as at the time when I experienced architecture as a boy without knowing it. This is what I love. These beginnings, these moments of the beginning. And then comes the really hard task when I have to take care that nobody destroys my first image. Because, as you know, we’re doing a job as architects. We are surrounded by politics, by laws, by money, by clients who have weak moments, and all these things. Sometimes people want to take away or harm my image, my baby. So, this needs a little bit of persistence. Maybe that’s where my reputation comes from that I’m a stubborn guy, which I’m not, of course.

As I get older, I think I got some kind of a… I’m sort of secure that I can do this—be a boy, and in being a boy and dreaming, doing something. Then I say, “When I like it, you will like it, too, because I’m not so special.” Now comes this moment when I get this prize. And I think now, and I start to feel that dreaming becomes even easier. Maybe I can. You help me to go on dreaming even stronger. Thank you.

Pritzker Prize 2009 Ceremony Acceptance Speech,
by Peter Zumthor

Learning from the Swiss Master

Peter Zumthor’s studio is located in the village of Haldenstein in the Swiss Alps, 100 km south of Zurich. It is surrounded by the rocky slopes of the Calandaberg. Here in this unusual idyll, far from city life, his staff of around 20 works on his much-discussed projects. The hectic nature of the international construction projects is nowhere apparent however: the pure alpine air and the studio garden filled with Japanese cherry trees give a misleading impression of calmness.

Zumthor’s small 'campus' comprises two buildings, both designed by him: a timber studio structure dating from 1981, and a U-shaped concrete studio-dwelling located a stone’s throw away and completed in 2003. The proximity of the private and work spaces characterises the life of Peter Zumthor and of his staff. Many come from abroad and have their rooms or homes close to the studio. Since this rural canton offers little in the way of distractions – apart from occasional receptions, farewell parties, raclette evenings and Christmas dinners – staff have little choice but to concentrate on their work while they’re there.

In the first weeks of my five-year sojourn, Zumthor made it clear to me that I had better quickly forget the Dutch 'academic' way of working I’d picked up while studying in Delft. He couldn’t do anything with colourful concept ideas or programmatic analyses. In Haldenstein you design in a pragmatic manner using elevations, plans, sections and details. From the outset, you design in a visual and constructive manner. ‘Thinking architecture’ as Zumthor calls it. And thinking is done not with the computer but with an empty sheet of paper and a soft 6B pencil.

The architecture of Zumthor is consistent and honest. The structure and form of construction are legible and a logical follow-on from the design idea and choice of material. A good design, says Zumthor, convinces in all its manifestations: as a building and a structure, yet also on paper, in section and in its detailing. The hallmark of his architecture is a carefully considered, almost aestheticised treatment of materials and accumulation of elements. He can talk endlessly with staff about the tiniest details. Many colleagues are exposed to a new dimension of perfection in this way. Even matters that later remain hidden are carefully thought through: ‘Der liebe Gott sieht alles!’

At the start of the design process Zumthor searches for an 'atmosphere'. He tries to find the right words to express a visual image for the assignment at hand, defined in terms of space, colour, light and sound. The architecture is described as precisely as possible in structural elements, materials and construction methods. In these discussions with team members, Zumthor stresses the importance of using the correct terminology. As a result, Swiss colleagues turn out to be true vocabulary fetishists. The lingua franca of these design discussions is German. And that’s good thing too, for there’s probably no better language to express his architecture than German, in which everything is so wonderfully direct, concise and precise.

Zumthor shares his thoughts with the team and explains the design to his architects using 6B pencils and paper. Models are then made. Interns are constantly making models of all sizes and sorts out of cardboard, wood, foam, plaster and wax in the basement of his studio-house. Zumthor can stand for hours at the models as he questions, analyses and refines all facets of a design. It’s a process that is only allowed to be disturbed by his tennis lessons or by an appearance of Roger Federer on television. This design phase can last weeks and only ends when all alternatives have been weighed up and everyone agrees about the approach to the design task at hand. He searches for der harte Kern der Schönheit.

The office is organised in a traditional, hierarchical manner, with architects, interns and draughtsmen. The last group makes the digital construction drawings. Working drawings are also prepared by the office. In elaborating the details, when the aesthetic ideals often clash with practicality, Zumthor displays as much determination as he does during the design stage. He possesses unlimited reserves of patience in encouraging his architects find ways to build something as it was designed. In this phase, too, the design is regularly adjusted and improved. Even during construction, Zumthor trusts his architectural convictions to such a degree that he’s willing to defy all the rules of the building process. His uncompromising attitude demands a lot of understanding and loyalty from clients, contractors and staff.

Despite the numerous job offers, Zumthor does not want his studio to grow. Architects work in small teams on the different projects. Calmness is needed for his patient, atmospheric design methods, and his uncompromising way of developing and detailing projects demands control and order. He selects his commissions on the basis of their architectural potential, his personal interests and the time available to him. A perfect idyll.

by Serge Schoemaker

An Ideal of Perfection

I do not work toward architecture from a theoretically defined point of departure, for I am committed to making architecture, to building, to an ideal of perfection, just as in my boyhood I used to make things according to my ideas, things that had to be just right, for reasons which I do not understand.

It was always there, this deeply personal feeling for the things I made for myself, and I never thought of it as being anything special.

It was just there.

Today, I am aware that my work as an architect is largely a quest for this early passion, this obsession, and an attempt to understand it better and to refine it.

And when I reflected on whether I have since added new images and passions to the old ones, and whether I have learned something in my training and practice, I realize that in some way I seem always to have known the intuitive core of new discoveries.

by Peter Zumthor

The Sound of Space

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 surfaces of the materials they contain, and the way those materials have been applied.

Take a wonderful spruce floor like the top of a violin and lay it across wood. Or again: stick it to a concrete slab. Do you notice the difference in sound? Of course.

But unfortunately many people are not aware of the sound a room makes.

The sounds we associate with certain rooms: speaking personally, what always comes first to my mind are the sounds when I was a boy, the noises my mother made in the kitchen. They made me feel happy. If I was in the front room I always knew my mother was at home because I could hear her banging about with pots and pans and what have you.

But there are sounds, too, in a great hall: the noises in the grand interior of a railway terminal, or you hear sounds in a town and so on.

But if we take it a step further - even if it gets a bit mystical now - and imagine extracting all foreign sound from a building, and if we try to imagine what that would be like: with nothing left, nothing there to touch anything else. The question arises: does the building still have a sound?

Try it out yourselves.

I think each one emits a kind of tone. They have sounds that aren't caused by friction. I've no idea what they are. Maybe it's the wind or something.

But you only really feel there's something else there when you enter a space that's soundproofed.

It's lovely.

I find it's a beautiful thing when you're making a building and you imagine the building in that stillness. I mean trying to make the building a quiet place. That's pretty difficult these days, because our world has become so noisy. Well, not so much here, perhaps. But I know other places that are much noisier and you have to go to some lengths to make quiet rooms and imagine the sound they make with all their proportions and materials in a stillness of their own.

I realise the sound I am making must remind you of a sermon - but isn't it more simple than that, and more pragmatic?

How does it really sound, when we walk through it. When we speak, when we talk to each other - what will the sound be?

And what if I want to sit in a living-room and talk to three good friends on a Sunday afternoon and read at the same time?

I've got something written down here: the closing of a door.

There are buildings that have wonderful sounds, telling me I can feel at home, I'm not alone.

I suppose I just can't get rid of that image of my mother, and actually I don't want to.

taken from:

Atmospheres

Peter Zumthor

In Search of the Lost Architecture

When I think about architecture, images come into my mind. Many of these images are connected with my training and work as an architect. They contain the professional knowledge about architecture that I have gathered over the years. Some of the other images have to do with my childhood. There was a time when I experienced architecture without even thinking about it. Sometimes I can almost feel a particular door handle in my hand, a piece of metal shaped like the back of a spoon.

I used to take hold of it when I went into my aunt's garden. That door handle still seems to me like a special sign of entry into a world of different moods and smells. I remember the sound of the gravel under my feet, the soft gleam of the waxed oak staircase, I can hear the heavy front door closing behind me as I walk along the dark corridor and enter the kitchen, the only really brightly lit room in the house.

Looking back, it seems as if this was the only room in the house in which the ceiling did not disappear into twilight; the small hexagonal tiles of floor, dark red and fitted so tightly together that the cracks between them were almost imperceptible, were hard and unyielding under my feet, and a smell of oil paint issued from the kitchen cupboard.

Everything about this kitchen was typical of a traditional kitchen. There was nothing special about it. But perhaps it was just the fact that it was so very much, so very naturally, a kitchen that has imprinted its memory indelibly on my mind. The atmosphere of this room is insolubly linked with my idea of a kitchen. Now I feel like going on and talking about the door handles that came after the handle on my aunt's garden gate, about the ground and the floors, about the soft asphalt warmed by the sun, about the flagstones covered with chestnut leaves in the autumn, and about all the doors that closed in such different ways, one replete and dignified, another with a thin, cheap clatter, others hard, implaceble, and intimidating...

Memories like these contain the deepest architectural experience that I know. They are the reservoirs of the architectural atmospheres and images that I explore in my work as an architect.

When I design a building, I frequently find myself sinking into old, half-forgotten memories, and then I try to recollect what the remembered architectural situation was really like, what it had meant to me at the time, and I try to think how it could help me now to revive that vibrant atmosphere pervaded by the simple presence of things, in which everything had its own specific place and form. And although I cannot trace any special forms, there is a hint of fullness and of richness that makes me think: this I have seen before. Yet, at the same time, I know that it is all new and different, and that there is no direct reference to a former work of architecture which might divulge the secret of the memory-laden mood.

taken from:

Thinking Architecture

Peter Zumthor

Atmosphere

Quality in architecture does not – not to me anyway – mean inclusion in architectural guides or histories of architecture or getting my work into this or that publication. Quality architecture to me is when a building manages to move me. What on earth is it that moves me? How can I get into my own work? How could I design something like the room in that photograph – one of my favorite icons, a building I have never seen, in fact I think it no longer exists – a building I just love looking at. How do people design things with such a beautiful, natural presence, things that move me every single time.

One word for it is atmosphere. This is something we all know about. Our first impression of a person. What I learned was: don’t trust it – give the guy a chance. Years passed. I got a bit older. And I have to admit that I’m back to believing in first impressions. It’s a bit like that with architecture, too.

I enter a building, see a room, and – in the fraction of a second – have this feeling about it.

taken from:

Atmosphere

by Peter Zumthor