Maestro of materials: Peter Zumthor, the 2009 Pritzker Architecture Prize laureate, is the antithesis of today's celebrity architect. He's the consummate 'architects' architect', highly esteemed by his peers and revered by young architects who find inspiration in his idiosyncratic buildings.

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ART & CULTURE

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Maestro of materials: Peter Zumthor, the 2009 Pritzker Architecture Prize laureate, is the antithesis of today's celebrity architect. He's the consummate 'architects' architect', highly esteemed by his peers and revered by young architects who find inspiration in his idiosyncratic buildings.

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Zumthor works in a material world. For him, materials are to an architect what notes are to a musician. "Each has its own physicality, its unique contribution to an architectural composition," he says. His chosen materials--his musical notes--become a composition in stone in the sculptural thermal baths in Vals; a composition in wood in the St. Benedict Chapel near Sumvitg; a composition in glass in the Kunsthaus in Bregenz, Austria.

In fact, the Jury Citation of th...

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