The idea of multiplicity is innate in Peter Zumthor’s projects since his very first works: works of art surrounding us put on various meanings, which do not always remain on parallel levels combining well with dialectical relationships. The vague is planned strictly, holding by the rules of the architectural language. Beauty is in the undetermined, the multiple, but it is obtainable only through precision. Multiplicity of objects is shown only when who is living with them can distinguish their single parts and, at the same time, can see the work in its wholeness. This throw back to the “unitary” character of architecture, in which every part is in relation with the others and together they give a sense to the project. Zumthor’s planning is pure: nothing is pointless. In this society, as the architect says, «architecture has to oppose resistance», and react to the naughtiness of shapes and meanings, and return to talk its own language. Original shape invention or particular composition doesn’t take to the truth. Between multiplicity and silence there’s a tense and vibrational relationship, and the concrete idea is in their equilibrium.
Things determine the spatial dimension of the world, and therefore its knowledge and usability to us. The project triggers a linking mechanism between things, so they can assume a meaning to the user, becoming an efficient tool to know of the world. Things, objects, the world of references, transform our sensations in remembrance. The pictures that come to mind enclose Zumthor’s research heart. Shape is the result, not the reason. Beauty doesn’t come out of the shape alone, but of the multiplicity of impressions, sensations and emotions that the shape has us to discover.
For Zumthor there is a strong connection between reality and living. This brings him to be oriented towards the concrete, imagining “things” and not “theories”. Emotion reveals the “authentic core” of things.
Saint Benedict - Courtesy of Marco Masetti
Saint Benedict - Courtesy of Marco Masetti
From emotion he passes on to remembrance and memory, which are the central threads in Zumthor’s research.
«The world is overloaded of signs and information, representative of things – Zumthor wrote – that nobody completely understands, because they are in turn nothing but signs representative of other signs. The real thing remains hidden. Nobody can ever see it». Zumthor’s architecture has nothing to hide from us: It is a direct sign that doesn’t throw back to other meanings. His architectural gestures remain dipped into the surroundings and don’t subjugate them to disputable formalisms. It’s no accident that his work is frequently categorized as minimal. Minimalist work always depends on a spectator, therefore it isn’t autonomous (or best, self-referenced), and furthermore it gives the impression to contain something, to be empty inside. «At the center of architecture, there seems to be an empty space. You can’t plan emptiness, but you can draw its boundaries, and so empty comes to life». So architecture is emptiness, and if the architect wants to produce beauty, he has to work on light and vibrations (sonorous, tactile…) that spread in this absence. Zumthor gives particular importance to the “metaphysical silence” and its peculiar and precise characteristics, akin to poetry. As George Steiner writes, «silence is an alternative. When, in the polis, words are filled with barbarism and lies, nothing talks as strongly as non-written poetry».
The process used by Zumthor to reach the memory is the «architectonic dramatization»: maybe it’s the only possible way to remember, because it’s only through emotions that mankind can remember. The monument, as a symbol, is not conceived by Zumthor, who imagines the building as a real place, not a content falsification. «To build a monument, – as he said – where every politician put up his plaque or his wreath, is the first act of forgetfulness».
In the shelters for the Roman archaeological site in Chur, Zumthor decides to establish an architectural link between the ruins and the city. The building is a filter between internal space and the city, that can penetrate, in the form of air, light and sound, through the thin plates in wood. The impression is to enter a non-temporal field: the space of the memory. Temporality is realized when the work considers the space in its totality, without distinctions between in and out. It is perceived only to (and in presence of) a spectator of the work that lives its volumes, contributing to strengthen the relations between architecture and the spectator himself.
In his works, light writes silently on objects the poetry, that is the only way to reach the truth – as he wrote in Thinking architecture. Originality and oddness have no connection with poetry. Air, light, sounds, and materials are the alphabet of his architecture, which speaks of itself, without however stunning us. A case in which (finally) the content returns to be the subject. This is the center of Zumthor’s architecture: they aren’t built to amaze us, as a performance, but they are here for man, who doesn’t have to be «stunned with chatter».
Zumthor has never investigated the theme of the city. By the way in some case it’s possible to distinguish interesting characteristics of this topic. I think of the Kunsthaus Museum’s square in Bregenz, and also at the relationship between building, ruins and city in Koln.
Kunsthaus - Courtesy of Marco Masetti
Kunsthaus - Courtesy of Marco Masetti
Zumthor always prefers knowledge, thought, order, in a century when man is looking for simple pleasures, immediate and ephemeral. These are the reflections that motivated me to try interviewing Mr. Peter Zumthor.
9th December 2009, Haldenstein, Graubünden, Switzerland.
Haldenstein is a little mountainous village, but, unlike the others, it has no “in style” buildings, awful expression of lack of architectural culture: the stratification of what is old and what is contemporary doesn’t take from the first, but both these souls become reconciled and in a way they mutually contemplate, without perverting each other.
Zumthor’s Atelier is representative of this pacific cohabitation in the silence of Alpine landscape: its structure, the construction method, and the use of materials are modern and recognizable, but its presence doesn’t offend the historic dimension of the place.
Zumthor’s collaborator Olivia Schmidt receives me into the Atelier; light enters from the wide windows and illuminates the models which are on the tables. It seems like a perfect ambient for working. Then she brings me to the personal architect’s office that is contiguous to his house. The first thing I do, as well as anyone who enters the house, is to leave my shoes in a little room and put on slippers. Passing through a room packed with models and sheets, that proves the intense activity of the architect, I get to the room for the interview. I’m sitting in front of him, and while I’m preparing the recording equipment, I hear music coming from the next room: an unexpected drum, a few seconds of rock, then silence.
The interview can start.
You write that «the world is full of signs and information, which stand for things that no one fully understands because they, too, turn out to be mere signs for other things. Yet the real thing remains hidden. No one never gets to see it» [PETER ZUMTHOR, Thinking architecture, Basel, Birkhäuser, 2006, p. 16.]. How can architecture offer «resistance» to the «waste of forms and meanings»? Let me be more specific: what are the projects most inspiring to you that embody this concept of «resistant» architecture?
Peter Zumthor - Courtesy of Marco Masetti
Peter Zumthor - Courtesy of Marco Masetti
There aren’t…
I don’t work in this way, with these references. I try to work like a normal person, like my mother for example, and I try to follow the needs of function and use: what does the place want, what does the place ask. It isn’t an academic work. These references upset me.
When you are in the planning phase, what is the first thing you do?
To feel, to think, to be careful… it’s nothing special, isn’t it? Just using common sense, to be bright, perceptive…
During the first planning stage, you think of the needs of the place and what it lacks. Then how does the planning evolve?
I don’t only think of the place: I visit it, because it’s a physical experience and all can be thought as being in the place.
In architecture, there’s always an underlying need. I think of the utilization: is what I do valuable? Do I like it? And what does it lack? I try to think and feel together the needs of function, use, and the peculiarity of the place. In the place physical appearance, when it’s observed, there is the whole history, because history shows in the world’s body, much more than in books. Also in books, certainly, but history, the memory, becomes narrative to be studied in university, where they need the book’s narration. But the true history, our families’ history, our people’s history, is here, and here, and there, and once again here, isn’t it? . So this is my work: to observe, and to understand what I see…or to try to understand.
In your work, emotion becomes memory. How is it possible to arouse the right emotion in those who live in architectural masterpieces, the wanted emotion connected to the remembrance that the architect would like us to feel in that specific place? I’m thinking especially of the residential house for the elderly in Masans…
Masans - Courtesy of Marco Masetti
Masans - Courtesy of Marco Masetti
Residential Home for the Elderly in Masans floor plan
Residential Home for the Elderly in Masans floor plan
Residential Home for the Elderly in Masans section
Residential Home for the Elderly in Masans section
It doesn’t happen in such academic manner. It’s much easier. It’s to use common sense: what is beautiful?