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1/31/2014 Peter Zumthor: Seven Personal Observations on Presence In Architecture | ArchDaily
http://www.archdaily.com/452513/peter-zumthor-seven-personal-observations-on-presence-in-architecture/ 1/8
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Peter Zumthor: Seven Personal Observations onPresence In Architecture
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Zumthor in Tel Aviv. Image © Yael Engelhart for Ha’aretz
Known for his superior design and unparalleled craftsmanship, the 2009 Pritzker Laureate
and 2013 RIBA Gold Medal Award winner, Peter Zumthor, was recently invited to speak at
the Azrieli School of Architecture, Tel Aviv University. In a lecture titled “Presence in
Architecture – Seven Personal Observations,” Zumthor shared some of the inspirations
behind his greatest projects, giving us insight into his poetic, intelligent, (and some might
say) “nearly divine” mind.
Zumthor’s Seven Points on “Presence,” after the break…
1: Spring 1951
“[It] was a beautiful day. There was no school. It must have been early spring – I
could smell it [...] I remember myself running as a boy, and I had this lightness and
elegance which I don’t have anymore.”
Zumthor, born the son of a cabinet-maker in 1943, began by recounting a seminal
experience from his childhood: “I didn’t know it then, but as an old man now, looking back, I
realize this was my first experience of presence.” As he defines it: “Presence is like a gap
in the flow of history, where all of [a] sudden it is not past and not future.”
How can presence be translated or achieved in architecture? This question is a key motive
in Zumthor’s atelier in the Swiss region of Graubünden. Founded in 1979, his home-based
studio is located in the valley of the Rhein, where many of his seminal works – ranging from
small-scale projects, such as home renovations and village chapels, to large-scale,
monumental museums – have been built. Zumthor purposefully maintains his Atelier in this
World
03 DEC2013
by Gili Merin
Architecture News Editor's ChoiceEditor’s Choice Lecture Series
Peter Zumthor Tel Aviv
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1/31/2014 Peter Zumthor: Seven Personal Observations on Presence In Architecture | ArchDaily
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Zumthor Studio. Image © Felipe Camus
Serpentine Pavilion By Peter Zumthor. Image © John Offenbach
humble, remote location in order to ensure his experience of “presence”: “Every once in a
while, I get this feeling of presence. Sometimes in me, but definitely in the mountains. If I
look at these rocks, those stones, I get a feeling of presence, of space, of material.”
2: Like a Tree
“I look at a tree and the tree doesn’t tell me anything.” A tree, according to Zumthor, is an
object worthy of his fascination and admiration, due to its lack of presumption: “The tree
does not have a message; The tree does not want to sell me something. The tree won’t say
to me – ‘look at me, I am so beautiful, I am more beautiful than the other trees.’ It’s just a
tree – and it’s beautiful.” To him, a tree is a pure being of obsolete presence; in his simple
terms: “Nothing special – incredibly powerful.”
3. Constructing presence in architecture: First attempt – Pure Construction
Zumthor recalls a 1993 competition to design a museum and documentation center of the
Holocaust, The Topography of Terror Museum, located in the former Gestapo headquarters
in Berlin. He describes the difficulties of creating architecture in such a historically charged
site: “All that had happened there came into my mind. [It was] a center for destruction [… ] I
can not do anything here. [...] How can you find the form?”
Rather than making a bold, controversial statement, as many of his fellow architects would
do, Zumthor instead decides to translate his inability to react to the site by withholding
architectural metaphors and symbolism. He decides to design a building with “no meaning,
no comment” by inventing a building of pure construction.
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1/31/2014 Peter Zumthor: Seven Personal Observations on Presence In Architecture | ArchDaily
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Model of Zumthor’s Topography of Terror Museum. Image © Zumthor Tublr
Steilneset Memorial. Image © Andrew Meredith
Although Zumthor’s design was chosen as the winner of the competition, construction was
halted in 1994 and the building’s bare, concrete core stood vacant for a decade. When
funding was regained, political shifts called for a new architectural competition, which led to
the destruction of Zumthor’s unfinished museum. Though the building was demolished, the
idea for a construction-inspired memorial site was not.
“Ideas are never lost. In a way, once you have found something, as an architect, you
have worked on something, you can always think about it again.”
The concept was revisited by Zumthor while designing the the Steilneset Memorial in
Norway, a memorial for the seventeenth-century Finnmark Witchcraft trials. The Memorial,
“a building with no meaning which made no comment,” was a scaffolding-inspired structure
composed of prefabricated wooden frames, constructed as a binary system of “voids and
sticks” that encompass a narrow interior walkway.
4. “Constructing presence in architecture: second attempt – the epitome of a
kitchen
Or: Make it typical, then it will become special”
“‘It looks beautiful, but it’s hard to use’ – that is a typical architect.”
He tells of a studio he once taught, where the mission was to be un-special: “Let’s set out
to be typical,” He told his students, and added: “It proved the fact that when you make
1/31/2014 Peter Zumthor: Seven Personal Observations on Presence In Architecture | ArchDaily
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Saint Benedict Chapel. Image © Felipe Camus
Interior shot of the Therme Vals. Image © Helene Binet
something really typical, it become special.”
5. Constructing presence in architecture: Third attempt – Form follows anything
Or: The body of architecture
“For me, architecture is not primarily about form, not at all.”
“Form Follows Anything” was a title of a symposium Zumthor attended some twenty years
ago. “I think that’s a great title […] architecture can be used to do anything. […] The form is
open.”
As Zumthor presents the next slide, the audience gasps – it is an interior shot of what is
perhaps his most celebrated and praised project to date, the Therme Vals.
“We actually never talk about form in the office. we talk about construction, we can
talk about science, and we talk about feelings [...] From the beginning the materials
are there, right next to the desk […] when we put materials together, a reaction
starts [...] this is about materials, this is about creating an atmosphere, and this is
about creating architecture.”
In the case of the Vals, the materials used were a mixed of locally quarried stones along
1/31/2014 Peter Zumthor: Seven Personal Observations on Presence In Architecture | ArchDaily
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Brauder Klaus Field Chapel. Image © Samuel Ludw ig
with Italian stones: “trust your materials.” Following the prolonged seven years design
process of the Vals, he could gladly say: “I found out that stone and water have a love
relationship.”
6. Constructing presence in architecture: Fourth attempt – The house without a form
While teaching at Harvard, Zumthor tasked his students with designing “The house without
a form,” for someone whom they share a close, emotional relationship with. They were to
present the site with no plans, sections or models. The objective was to inspire a new sort
of space, described by sounds, smells and verbal description: “When I look at this kind of
house without a form, what interests me the most is emotional space. If a space doesn’t
get to me, then I am not interested [...] I want to create emotional spaces which get to you.”
7. Constructing presence in architecture: Fifth attempt – Kim Kashkashian plays the
Sonata number 2 in E flat major for Viola and piano by Johannes Brahms
“I remember when listening to this piece. [...] after a fragment of a second, I was in
it. Music has this capacity to go directly to your heart, much more than architecture.
To me music can change the chemistry within you.”
Zumthor ends his lecture with the importance of the “wordless impression” of different
encounters with music, art, architecture and people:
“In a fragment of a second you can understand: Things you know, things you don’t
know, things you don’t know that you don’t know, conscious, unconscious, things
which in a fragrant of a second you can react to: we can all imagine why this capacity
was given to us as human beings – I guess to survive. Architecture to me has the
same k ind of capacity. It takes longer to capture, but the essence to me is the
same. I call this atmosphere. When you experience a building and it gets to you. It
sticks in your memory and your feelings. I guess thats what I am trying to do.”
He pauses: “There is something bigger in the world than you are.”
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Cite:
Merin, Gili. "Peter Zumthor: Seven Personal Observations on Presence In Architecture" 03 Dec 2013.ArchDaily. Accessed 30 Jan 2014. <http://www.archdaily.com/?p=452513>
16 comments
Laust Christian Øby Kjeldsen
Gili Merin
noname noname
Silouan Allan
bruce
Zack
Xavier
Efthimios Maniatis
Erik
Reply
Interesting. Is it posible to stream the lecture anyw here?
0
Reply
Unfortunately the lecture wasn’t taped, but a similar lecture by Zumthor can be
viewed in the 2013 RIBA Gold Medal Award ceremony:
http://www.archdaily.com/352699/royal-gold-medal-2013-lecture-peter-zumthor/
+9
Reply
Word Up!
+2
Reply
Refreshingly altruistic.
0
Reply
…
-1
Reply
http://rheinsprung11.unibas.ch/archiv/ausgabe-01/dialog.html
0
Reply
I admire Zumthor’s sensibility for architecture as much as his works but I also find it
very hard to communicate and most of the time confusing.
Although I believe genius can be taught, I agree that beauty can’t be conceptualized. Thus, any
attempt to teach artistic sensibility is futile. The only way to do this is to live and work.
+9
Reply
Yes, very good thought, and I w ill add that if our goal is to learn from Peter Zumthor then as
you said ” live and w ork” w hich translates to me 1. be present be here , be now 2. miss no step, 3. feel
good about one self, 4. help someone or do (w ork) for someone, 5, belong to a community (close of
far) so to provide and learn, is the school to attend , 6, f ind and keep the joy for: been, w orking, leaving,
making…7. be truthful.(real) 8. get it done, 9. laugh about about oneself (so to not take one self too
seriously, 10, stay alive.
We all w ish to be like him, but he w ants us to be ourselves. I made theses lessons up for me to go have
a w ay to get somew here. I am study him since his Saint Benedict Chapel w as published in DOMUS
0
Great stuff, is it possible to f ind a video or full transcription of the lecture on the w eb?
0
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Gili Merin
Laurence Srinivasan
Alonzo
kristina
idle_crane
YAN YU
Abhijeeet Kumar
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Reply
Reply
Hi Erik, please note my earlier replay to Laust Christian Øby Kjeldsen, w ith a link to a similar
streamed lecture.
+1
Reply
confidence to retreat from the noise of the w orld…
+1
Reply
Admiro la sensibilidad de Zumthor y la forma en que comunica sus pensamientos es algo increíble
que te envuelve en sus pensamientos.
0
Reply
Sw iss architect Peter Zumthor w as presented w ith the 2013 Royal Gold Medal in February. Here he
gives the 2013 Royal Gold Medal Lecture at the RIBA, taking as his theme Presence in Architecture.
http://vimeo.com/60017470
0
Reply
Let’s all turn our computer off, and sit in a garden some w here.
0
Reply
Truth,Beauty,the sound of silence…
0
Reply
hard to understand..such an abstract interpretations…but..still..inspiring
0
1/31/2014 Peter Zumthor: Seven Personal Observations on Presence In Architecture | ArchDaily
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