PETER ZUMTHOR

My buildings are declarations of love for their sites...

- PETER ZUMTHOR

By :
MOHD. SIDDIQ SALIM
B-ARCH , III YR
POORNIMA UNIVERSITY , JAIPUR
 INTRODUCTION
 Born on 26th April !943 is an Swiss architect

 Zumthor founded his own firm in 1979.

.
 He won Pritzker prize for Therme Vals in 2009.

 His buildings explore the tactile and sensory qualities of spaces

and materials while retaining a minimalist feel.

 He was born in Basel, he spent the late 1960s as a visiting student

at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, and he has taught architecture at
Santa Monica’s SCI-Arc and Harvard.

 He began his career as a carpenter, and all of his architecture has

the qualities a great cabinetmaker brings to his work: it is precise,
and its glory lies in the perfection of its details and in the
excellence of its materials.

 His work on historic restoration projects gave him a further PETER ZUMTHOR
understanding of construction and the qualities of different rustic
building materials.
ARCHITECT’S PHILOSOPHY
• He believes that in the end of every conceptual thinking starts real
architecture which is based on structure and materials.
• One of the architects who incorporated and realized phenomenology
in his work is Peter Zumthor. His buildings incorporate his knowledge
of materials into modernist construction and detailing, while they
explore the tactile and sensory qualities of spaces and other materials,
maintaining a minimalistic feel.
• His buildings look as if they were made by hand, and while they are
unabashedly modern, they bespeak craftsmanship more than high
tech.
• Zumthor’s design merges lightness and technology with a grace.

• Zumthor expresses his motivation to design buildings that speak to our

feelings and understanding and buildings that possess a powerful
presence and personality.
“To me, buildings can have a beautiful silence that I associate with
attributes such as composure, self-evidence, durability, presence, and
integrity, and with warmth and sensuousness as well”
“Sometimes I can almost feel a particular door handle in my hand, a piece
of metal shaped like the back of a spoon. That door handle still seems to
me like a special sign of entry into a world of different moods and smells.

I remember the sound of the gravel under my feet, the soft gleam of the
waxed oak staircase,

I can hear the heavy front door closing behind me. . . .

Memories like these contain the deepest architectural experience that I

know. They are the reservoirs of the architectural atmospheres and
images that I explore in my work as an architect.”
 WORKS

THE SWISS PAVILION FOR EXPO 2000 IN KUNSTHAUS BREGENZ,

HANNOVER, AN ALL-TIMBER STRUCTURE VORARLBERG, BRUDER KLAUS FIELD CHAPEL,
INTENDED TO BE RECYCLED AFTER THE EVENT AUSTRIA (1997) ON A FARM NEAR WACHENDORF,
GERMANY

THE KOLUMBA DIOCESAN MUSEUM (2007), IN

INTERIOR OF THE CHAPEL (MELTED LEAD IS USED
THERME VAL BATHS, SWITZERLAND
COLOGNE, GERMANY
THERME VALS
■ “Mountain, stone, water – building in the
stone, building with the stone, into the
mountain, building out of the mountain,
being inside the mountain – how can the
implications and the sensuality of the
association of these words be interpreted,
architecturally?” - Peter Zumthor

■ Location: Graubünden, Switzerland

■ Design and Construction: 1986-1996

■ Client: Municipality of Vals, Graubünden

■ Special features –
– MOUNTAIN :GEOLOGY OF THE SITE BUILT
INTO THE MOUNTAINS
– MATERIAL: STONE
– WATER: FUNCTION BATH

SOURCE : http://www.archdaily.com/13358/the-therme-vals
HISTORY

In the 1960s a German property developer, Karl Kurt Vorlop, built a

hotel complex with over 1,000 beds to take advantage of the
naturally occurring thermal springs and the source, which provides
the water for Valser mineral water, sold throughout Switzerland.
After the developer went bankrupt, the village of Vals bought up
the five hotels in the development in 1983 and resolved to
commission a hydrotherapy centre at the centre of the five hotels,
at the source of the thermal springs. In 2012 the hotel and spa,
previously owned by the Vals community, was sold to the investor
Remo Stoffel.
SITEBuilding siting. Therme vals sits in the
■
hillside as a natural rock outcropping,
balanced between the existing
buildings on the site, navigating views
and visits.

Vals at the base of the swiss alps is

■
about, water, and the landscape.
Therme vals is about water, in the
landscape.
ACTUAL PHOTO

HOTEL THERME
 CONCEPT
Therme Vals became an icon of contemporary
architecture

Built the structure on the sharp grade of an

Alpine mountain slope with grass-topped roofs
to mimic Swiss meadows.

The spa building embraces many natural

elements, such as heat, light, water, stone,
sound in distributions and combination
beyond conventionality while comprising an
environment of the senses.

The concept of public bath itself is intriguing, since it can connote the ideas of baptism
and purity, since baths were a Roman tradition
■ The Therme Vals is a hotel and spa for which the
idea was to create a form of cave or quarry like
structure. The idea of a quarry , were cut out of
the single blocks, so that between the stacked and
cut out block caves are created.
■ The Therme Vals is built from layer upon layer of
locally quarried Valser Quarzite slabs.
■ The ‘natural’ thermal water which comes from the
mountain just behind the baths has a temperature
of 30°C.
■ There is no directly visible entrance to the building
- the visitors are access to the complex through a
tunnel.
■ Architecture is bridging the gap between the
randomness of nature and man-made
construction.
PLAN 4
5
6 7

3 2

1 1 1 1
1-Terraces Plan at upper level
2-Indoor pool
3-Outdoor pool
4-Showers
5-Changing rooms
6-Make up room
7-Entrance from the hotel
 Plan at Lower level
Functions: Massage room, Rest space.
SECTIONS
EXTERIOR AND INTERIOR VIEWS
 THE MATERIALS
“Materials react with one another and have their radiance, so that the
material composition gives rise to something unique. Material is endless”

Stone slabs

The structure materials are natural: stone, water, metal and even
natural light penetrates the structure
The energy of the place is very strong, not allowing its users to be very obvious, leaving
them in a ‘sleep’ mode, and at the same time, ready to be alert.
 ■
“In each of my works, each material has laid down its own laws...
Projects are born out of an idea, and in my case this idea is always
accompanied by a material. I can't imagine a method of design in
which the architect first decides on the form, and then on thematerials“
. – PETER ZUMTHOR.

SOURCE : http://www.floornature.com/projects-commerce/project-p-zumthor-swiss-pavilion-at-expo-2000-in-hanover-4
 FEATURES OF BUILDING
THE EXTERIOR

The Grassed Roof

A Secret Hideaway-
The Roof Panels Are
Extensively Planted With
Grass And Thereby
Integrate Into The
Landscape.

Sunk in the Hillside

He was not allowed to build outwards, he sunk

the building into the hillside roofing his
structure with flat units of roof that match the
scenery perfectly.
VERNACULAR ARCHITECTURE

Vals stones A Close Up view

It is the same material used for the roofs of the Vals village houses and it comes
straight from the mountain. These slabs make the building look strong, resistant,
even violent and rough, just like the alpine landscape.
FAÇADE OF THE BUILDING
The only façade the building has, is made out of these stones and interrupted by
wide openings and windows.
The symmetry of the exposed façade with the environment is unique but what
is also amazing is the fact that there are no doors in this façade!

MAIN ENTRANCE
MOUNTAIN VIEW

Outdoor Pool & Mountain view

The concrete shell and the clean
lines of the volume come out of the
alpine landscape and the green
valley, creating equally natural and
impressive textures.
 ENTRANCE 15-DIFFERENTS UNITS
The entrance In order to enter the spa, the The spa building is made up
only way was from the of 15 different table-
nearby hotel complex, using a like units, 5 metres in
corridor through the height,with cantilevered
mountain. This dark corridor concrete of units
really did the trick. supported by tie-beams.
 RED AND BLUE ROOMS NON-LINEAR DESIGN THE ROOF HOLES

There are also gaps between

The different rectangular
the roof units that allow lines
units reveal what is
of light, making the feeling of
The baths where the revealed from the exterior:
the heavy roof even lighter.
water is hot, calm red the naïve and childish
As the natural light is filtered
lighting is used and the design of different
through these small gaps, it
concrete walls are rectangular and other
creates the illusion that these
tinted red; while where shapes that brick together
massive concrete ceilings are
the water is cold, the like a puzzle, better, like a
floating in mid air.
lighting is blue. Tetris game!
THE MYSTERIOUS ATMOSPHERE

THE MYSTERY DRAMATIC STAIRCASE

NO SPECIFIC PATH TO WANDER

The staircase, the dark corridor and the fountain can be thought as these
aspects. The fact that there is no designated way of exploring the building
makes us feel that it is like a walk in the woods, where you do not have a
specific path, but you wander and discover.
THE GAME OF LIGHT AND SHADOW

NATURAL & ARTIFICIAL LIGHT LIGHT GAME

Zumthor testifies, light, either artificial or daylight, can help us feel a spiritual quality.
“I don’t understand light. It gives me the feeling that there’s something beyond
me, something beyond all understanding. And I am very glad, very grateful that
there is such a thing.” --- (Zumthor, 1998:55 ).
 CONSTRUCTION DETAILS
CLADDING MODULES

The composite masonry

blocks are 60,000 cut to
one meter length slabs
(metamorphic rock
of feldspar, quartz and
mica formed).

THE BLOCKS WERE FORMED WITH 15-CENTIMETER-THICK PLATES, STACKED BY HANDS

THIS IN TURN CONSIST OF THREE LAYERS OF DIFFERENT THICKNESSES SLABS. THIS
ENABLED A SIMPLE CONSTRUCTION, ALTHOUGHTHE ARRANGEMENT OF THE EYE
LOOKS RANDOM.
ROOF ASSEMBLY

•
The overhanging roof of the each units doesn’t coincide with each other it creates a
beautiful natural light effect in the building.
The spa building is made up
of 15 different table-like
units, 5 metres in
height,with cantilevered
concrete of units supported
by tie-beams.
ROOF CONNECTION DETAIL
VERTICAL SECTION AND DETAIL
WALL SECTION AND DETAILS
Zumthor has written,
“a consciousness of time passing and an awareness of the human
lives that have been acted out in these places. At these moments,
architecture’s aesthetic and practical values, stylistic and historical
significance are of secondary importance. What matters now is
only the feeling of deep melancholy. Architecture is exposed to
life.”

Thank You!!!