ZTH

“Zumthor on the Bench” … Happy 70th Birthday...

Fri, 26 Apr 2013 15:31:31 +0200

“Zumthor on the Bench”

…

Happy 70th Birthday Peter Zumthor !

Fri, 26 Apr 2013 11:07:24 +0200

Happy 70th Birthday Peter Zumthor !

Werkraumhaus Andelsbuch - Construction Progress

Thu, 18 Apr 2013 11:58:14 +0200

Werkraumhaus Andelsbuch - Construction Progress

Reopening of Kunsthaus Bregenz Café Restaurant Following three...

Tue, 16 Apr 2013 11:57:20 +0200

Reopening of Kunsthaus Bregenz Café Restaurant

Following three months of intensive renovations planned with the architect Peter Zumthor, the Kunsthaus Bregenz Café Restaurant is ready to reopen. The former museum shop, which was already being used by the café last year, has now been completely redesigned. The furniture and counter were made by the Bereuter carpentry firm based in Bregenz Forest, and the lamp by designer Madlaina Lys. Peter Zumthor himself designed the red leather chairs manufactured by the Mohr upholstery workshop in nearby Andelsbuch. Koho Mori-Newton’s silk curtains complete the space’s sumptuous designer furnishings.

Newly designed room by Peter Zumthor,
KUB Café Restaurant, 2013
Photo: Markus Tretter
© Kunsthaus Bregenz

Peter Zumthor 1986-2013: Buildings and Projects Release Date:...

Thu, 04 Apr 2013 17:54:00 +0200

Peter Zumthor 1986-2013:
Buildings and Projects

Release Date: ~~July 2013~~ Update 15. September 2013

Price: 200$ (on Amazon)

Werkraumhaus Andelsbuch.

Wed, 03 Apr 2013 17:10:00 +0200

Werkraumhaus Andelsbuch.

Exploring Peter Zumthor's 'holistic approach' to design

Thu, 28 Mar 2013 12:55:39 +0100

Exploring Peter Zumthor's 'holistic approach' to design : BBC´sTom Dyckhoff travelled to Switzerland...

One of the Best Zumthor Interviews i´ve read so far. via - klat...

Fri, 15 Mar 2013 17:33:10 +0100

One of the Best Zumthor Interviews i´ve read so far.

via - klat Magazine.

(Scroll down for the English Version)

2013 RIBA Royal Gold Medal Winner Peter Zumthor in conversation...

Mon, 11 Feb 2013 13:24:38 +0100

2013 RIBA Royal Gold Medal Winner Peter Zumthor in conversation with the RIBA’s Tony Chapman

RIBA Journal exclusive cut: Tony Chapman of the RIBA went to...

Fri, 08 Feb 2013 15:40:27 +0100

RIBA Journal exclusive cut: Tony Chapman of the RIBA went to Switzerland to interview Peter Zumthor on his home turf on craft, clients, Stonehenge in Devon and conversation versus trust.

Interview with Royal Gold Medallist Peter Zumthor AJ...

Wed, 06 Feb 2013 12:05:42 +0100

Interview with Royal Gold Medallist Peter Zumthor

AJ exclusive: James Pallister spoke with Swiss starchitect Peter Zumthor on the eve of his RIBA Gold Medal lecture

This week Peter Zumthor was awarded the RIBA’s highest honour – the Royal Gold Medal, adding to the 69-year-old’s haul of plaudits, which includes the Pritzker Prize, The Praemium Imperiale and the Thomas Jefferson Foundation Medal in Architecture.

Many details that make your work so rich seem to come from very close observation of daily life. Do you think architects’ work would be better if they learnt to relax and play a little more?
I know exactly what you mean but it gives the wrong impression of how I work. I try to create emotional spaces that feel right for the purpose and the place. So I try to go into the use of the building very deeply and see what could be beautiful and comfortable.

Sometimes it’s hard to get there. If I can tell something is missing, or I’m not quite there yet, I must be honest with myself. I must tell the client: ‘Please be patient for another month or two, or a year. You will have the rewards for that if you are patient now’.

This is not easy sometimes. In judging what I am doing I have to be playful and serene and open and emotional because that – as we know – is how architecture is perceived, and not in abstract. I want to please people with my buildings unconsciously, emotionally. That’s all. I don’t want to lecture them. But it’s hard labour to get there.

Developing the sensibility for minutiae your work shows – how thin a rail should be, how it should feel – seems to be at odds with spending all hours working in a practice, as many architects must in the UK. Is it?
I customised my practice in the way I wanted to work. I think everybody can do that. You can always say ‘this is how I want to live, this is how I want to work’ and go from there.

You’ve alluded to a ‘slow architecture’. That goes against a lot of the demands of contemporary life and business: of doing more for less. How do you convince clients that it’s worth taking the extra time to develop something good?
By quality. One client once said, at a time when things were difficult: ‘Your best argument is the finished building.’ So I have to persevere to get there. Now I have more finished buildings it becomes easier for clients to trust. It was much more of a challenge for my clients to trust me 20 years ago.
If you were to talk to my clients, they would say: ‘We could see he was always sincere.’ They could see I was trying to do the best.

Even if you annoyed them?
Exactly!

In the UK there is a caricature of architects that they are all egomaniacs, waste money and have no idea of what ‘real people’ like. Do you recognise this or do you think it’s an irrelevance?
For our society it’s very relevant. I think that’s what this prize is about. There are still some people left who believe in architecture not as a money-making machine but in architecture as an art.

And yes, there are certain architects who are making fancy forms, but – big deal, so what! But architects who don’t know what people want, that’s a serious problem. It would hurt me if someone said ‘you did a thermal bath or an art museum which looks beautiful but cannot be used’. So architectural education should try to always focus on the ‘use’ – in the broadest sense of the word. Not function, use. I always think that there is something very noble to this. It is a noble thing to think how a building is used, because it has to do with how people’s lives are staged and how they are loved.

Do you revisit buildings to see how they work?
I don’t have to do this. I get this right away. I get the reactions straight away.

In the UK we have a housing shortage: Do you have any advice for architects doing housing projects?
I would like to do housing but I have never had a chance. I am trying to convince some people in Switzerland – a major insurance company – [I should] work for them. I told them if they had the opportunity I would be really interested in doing something for them – not high end. For normal people. Affordable housing. I will also do something in Holland, in Leiden.

Do people enjoy working for you?
When people work with me they are normally happy. I asked this young girl from Holland how she liked working as an intern in the practice and she said ‘It’s great! Now I believe in architecture again. I can see it still exists.’

In contrast to architecture school?
I have had the experience before that, when people go and study architecture at architecture school and they learn all these theories and the assistants are more clever than the professor and there’s all these talking heads, there is a gap between that and the real thing, which is the building. If architecture education does not focus on constructing, it becomes irrelevant for the building industry.

What would your advice be to a young architect starting now?
Select your school carefully. Select your professors carefully. Try and go to a place where architecture is taught as a whole thing – not only as a theory, but also as a way of living.
Don’t let any kind of gap come up between your architectural concept and living architecture.

What do you mean by ‘a gap’?
In architecture schools there is too much emphasis on the abstract: on the correct theory, idea or concept. Sometimes that stays very abstract and has nothing to do with real life.
I remember when I taught a semester in Harvard we assigned the students a house without a form. They could select a place they knew well and the research task was to represent a house with everything but drawings. This worked wonderfully.

Renzo Piano, who was teaching nearby, by chance walked in and said ‘Oh! You are working on beauty’. In a sense he was right. We were working on emotional spaces connected to the biography of each of these 12 students. I told them: ‘Don’t give me any abstract “because of this and because of that”. As soon as you start to talk about your feelings you are competent.’ And that’s a beautiful competence!

Via.

This is Peter Zumthor’s House/Studio in the small village...

Tue, 15 Jan 2013 17:42:05 +0100

This is Peter Zumthor’s House/Studio in the small village of Haldenstein, just outside of Chur in the Graubünden region of Switzerland.

Via.

Architectural Models by Peter Zumthor a Set on Flickr. In...

Fri, 11 Jan 2013 14:12:02 +0100

Architectural Models by Peter Zumthor

a Set on Flickr.

In response to popular demand, Peter Zumthor’s architectural projects will continue to be on view in the KUB Collection Showcase in 2013

The architect Peter Zumthor lives and works in the remote...

Mon, 07 Jan 2013 20:46:00 +0100

The architect Peter Zumthor lives and works in the remote village of Haldenstein in the Swiss Kanton of Graubünden. Here, keeping the politics of architecture at a comfortable distance, Zumthor enjoys the status of “world-class” architect for his unique modernist buildings. They can be found in many parts of Europe, soon to be followed by a public building in Los Angeles, where he is in charge of a new master plan for LACMA. Visiting him in his studio, where he would be surrounded by drawings and marquettes turned out to be a good idea. Critic Kenneth Frampton questioned him during a tour of his current work and about his pioneering earlier works, such as the Spa in Vals, for which he received much early recognition, and the recent much acclaimed Kolumba, the museum of the archdiocese of Cologne, Germany. He showed us and discussed his models for his Zink-Mine-Museum in Almannajuuvet, Norway; Memorial to the Burning of Witches in the Finnmark, Vardo, Norway; The Chivelstone House, A secular Retreat, for Devon, England; The House of Seven Gardens, for Sheik Saoud Al Thani, Doha, Qatar; Hortus conclusus for the 2011 Serpentine Pavilion in London; and several others, some completed and others in progress. For views of his built designs we used the photographs of Hélène Binet who has photographed his architecture from the beginning. Zumthor cherishes his isolated location to be able to work without much interruption. He seemed quite relaxed despite our visit, accomplishing most of a day’s work at the same time. © Michael Blackwood Productions

order it here.

Construction Site of the Werkraumhaus Andelsbuch. Peter...

Tue, 04 Dec 2012 12:54:30 +0100

Construction Site of the Werkraumhaus Andelsbuch. Peter Zumthor.

Take a Virtual Tour here. It´s great !

Hortus Conclusus Serpentine Pavilion, arch. Peter Zumthor,...

Fri, 30 Nov 2012 15:35:19 +0100

Hortus Conclusus

Serpentine Pavilion, arch. Peter Zumthor, London 2011

Via.

Witch memorial, Steilneset, Vardø Between 1600 and 1692, 91...

Thu, 29 Nov 2012 13:00:19 +0100

Witch memorial,

Steilneset, Vardø

Between 1600 and 1692, 91 people were convicted of sorcery in Finnmark, and put to death by fire. Peter Zumthor and Louise Bourgeois have made a memorial to the victims of this persecution.

Architect: Atelier Peter Zumthor & Partner. Artist: Louise Bourgeois

Via.

NEED A VACATION ? “Zumthor Vacation Homes in Leis...

Tue, 20 Nov 2012 11:22:29 +0100

NEED A VACATION ?

“Zumthor Vacation Homes

in Leis by Vals

In 2009 we built two timber houses, the Oberhus and the Unterhus, in the hamlet of Leis, just over

1,500 m above sea level in the community of Vals in Grisons.

From 1 December 2012 onward we are letting out the Unterhus for vacations.

A third timber house, the Türmlihus, will soon complete this
little ensemble. The Türmlihus will welcome its first guests in autumn 2013.

We are very much looking forward to having guests in our timber vacation homes in Leis.

Annalisa and Peter Zumthor”

Via.

Peter Zumthor for The Wall Street Journal Magazine. Via.

Mon, 05 Nov 2012 12:03:00 +0100

Peter Zumthor for The Wall Street Journal Magazine.

Via.

Zumthor lands go-ahead for revised Devon holiday home Peter...

Thu, 01 Nov 2012 12:57:19 +0100

Zumthor lands go-ahead for revised Devon holiday home

Peter Zumthor has won planning for substantially revised designs for a ‘secular retreat’ for Living Architecture in Devon

The Swiss Pritzker Prize and RIBA Gold Medal-winner landed planning consent earlier this month with smaller plans for the high-profile holiday home. An initial version was approved in July 2011.

Zumthor’s latest 365m² concrete and glass design features five bedrooms with an open-plan living room and landscaping.

The larger, 430m² original concept included a music room and separate parlour and kitchen dining room.

Living Architecture creative director Alain de Botton said the scheme was altered in line with the architects’ desire to make it ‘more spartan and monastic’.

He told the AJ: ‘At one point, the house started growing a music room, Zumthor imagined that a string quartet might visit the house and practice. But with time, he changed his mind and returned to what had been an earlier, purer vision.’

He added: ‘It’s not a coincidence that Zumthor has built so little in his life; he really is a master craftsman who wants to get every detail right.’

Replacing a two storey 1940s brick house in Chivelstone, the single-storey scheme is expected to start on site in February.

Via.