Peter Zumthor

Architect

1943-04-26

Quotes by Peter Zumthor

• I would describe the distinction between city and landscape like this: cities tend to excite and agitate me; they make me feel big or small, self-confident, proud, curious, excited, tense, annoyed... or they intimidate me. But the landscape, if I give it the chance, offers me freedom and serenity. Nature has a different sense of time. Time is big in the landscape while in the city it is condensed, just like the city's space.

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• I would describe the distinction between city and landscape like this: cities tend to excite and agitate me; they make me feel big or small, self-confident, proud, curious, excited, tense, annoyed... or they intimidate me. But the landscape, if I give it the chance, offers me freedom and serenity. Nature has a different sense of time. Time is big in the landscape while in the city it is condensed, just like the city's space.

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• 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.

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• 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.

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• 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 brittle, and of edges polished by use.

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• 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 core of architecture: To provide a space for human beings.

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• I'm not mainly interested in what buildings mean as symbols or vehicles for ideas.

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• 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 wood house feels cooler than a concrete one, and when it's cold, the other way around.

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• Architecture is exposed to life. If its body is sensitive enough, it can assume a quality that bears witness to past life.

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• I've built two wooden houses near Vals. I built them for my wife. Those were private projects.

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