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.
| Auteur | Krienke, Mary |
| Fonction | ART & CULTURE |
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
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 the Pritzker Prize--architecture's equivalent of the Nobel Prize--singles out Zumthor's use of materials for special praise: "In Zumthor's hands, like those of the consummate craftsman, materials from cedar shingles to sandblasted glass are used in a way that celebrates their own unique qualities, all in the service of an architecture of permanence ... In paring down architecture to its barest yet most sumptuous essentials, he has reaffirmed architecture's place in a fragile world."
Grounded in Graubunden
Born in Basel in 1943, the son of a cabinet-maker, Peter Zumthor served a four-year apprenticeship to a carpenter before entering the Basel Kunstgewerbeschule, followed by further study at Pratt Institute in New York. "Chance"--in the form of a job with the cantonal Department for the Preservation of Monuments--brought him to Graubunden in the '70s, where he has remained ever since.
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
"The best things happen without planning," he says. "I never would have imagined making my life in Graubunden."
In 1979, Zumthor established his own architectural practice in Haldenstein, a bucolic village just outside Chur, far removed from the international architectural scene. Past the local castle and up a quiet side street, one encounters the architect's combination atelier/residence. Fronted with weathered wood, it consists of a sequence of connected spaces built around a garden planted with maples. While contemporary in design, it relates beautifully to the village structures of another age, as well as to the fences, pastures and woods of its environment.
The jumble of bicycles parked outside attests to the youth and casual style of the some 20 architects from seven countries--average age about 30--who work within. A stocking-footed Zumthor greets me at the entry. I adopt the Japanese no-shoes dictum and we pad through the working area, past the architectural mock-ups, which resemble pieces of sculpture more than working...
Pour continuer la lecture
SOLLICITEZ VOTRE ESSAICOPYRIGHT GALE, Cengage Learning. All rights reserved.
