About Peter Zumthor: Peter Zumthor is a Swiss architect and winner of the 2009 Pritzker Prize and 2013 RIBA Royal Gold Medal.
I am convinced that a good building must be capable of absorbing the traces of human life and taking on a specific richness... I think of the patina of age on materials, of innumerable small scratches on surfaces, of varnish that has grown dull and b...
I work a little bit like a sculptor. When I start, my first idea for a building is with the material. I believe architecture is about that. It's not about paper, it's not about forms. It's about space and material.
Architecture to me is whole. I cannot say I only care about this 25% and the other 75% I let go... it's just I want to work the way I want to work. In my shop, you can order certain things and other things you cannot. They are not available.
Architecture is exposed to life. If its body is sensitive enough, it can assume a quality that bears witness to past life.
In a society that celebrates the inessential, architecture can put up a resistance, counteract the waste of forms and meanings and speak its own language.
I think the chance of finding beauty is higher if you don't work on it directly. Beauty in architecture is driven by practicality. This is what you learn from studying the old townscapes of the Swiss farmers.
If you look at the Earth without architecture, it's sometimes a little bit unpleasant. So there is this basic human need to do shelter in the broadest sense of the word, whether it's a movie theater or a simple log cabin in the mountains. This is the...
There is still a real need for good quality architecture, not paper architecture, but the real stuff.
Architecture has its place in the concrete world. This is where it exists. This is where it makes its statement.
The first 10 years of my professional life had only to do with running away from my father. He was a wonderful cabinet-maker, and me being the eldest son, I had to take over his shop, his profession and so on and so on. I tried to escape by going to ...
What I try to do is the art of building, and the art of building is the art of construction; it is not only about forms and shapes and images.
I need a close contact to the client, whoever it is, and a commitment of the client to go out and do a process together. I want to do the best for him. I need his respect and his patience. I want to work with a sophisticated person who's interested i...
You feel a certain way in a glass or concrete or limestone building. It has an effect on your skin - the same with plywood or veneer, or solid timber. Wood doesn't steal energy from your body the way glass and concrete steal heat. When it's hot, a wo...
The bottom line may be that my inventing buildings is, indeed, a very private kind of activity. But it's done to be shared. It is comforting and consoling. From the reactions I get I can see I'm not doing something strange.
If you're lucky, and a building succeeds, the real product has many more dimensions than you can ever imagine. You have the sun, the light, the rain, the birds, the feel.
If, early on, you know how things are put together, then you can build. The architect is in charge of making - he is not an artist.
I'm not mainly interested in what buildings mean as symbols or vehicles for ideas.
Normally, architects render a service. They implement what other people want. This is not what I do. I like to develop the use of the building together with the client, in a process, so that as we go along we become more intelligent.
My first buildings, when I was about 30, were rejected for aesthetic reasons.
I've built two wooden houses near Vals. I built them for my wife. Those were private projects.
