Extracts from my dissertation in Architecture – Part 2

“An enquiry into the sensory aspects of architecture in the last century.”

Peter Zumthor

Swiss architect, born in 1943. He was an apprentice in cabinet-making by the age of 15, studied design at the arts school in Basel in 1963, and interior design at Pratt Institute in New York in 1966. In 1968, he was an architect in the Department of the Care and Preservation of Monuments in Switzerland, where he gained experience with building materials. (Zumthor, 2006, p. 8)

Zumthor is considered to be a phenomenological architect. Zumthor is very poetic, he is a sensitive architect who is “impressed by the knowledge of how to make things” (Zumthor, 1998, p.12), which also reinforces his attention to detail and his passion for materials (Ibid, p.12).

Mohsen Mostafavi states that “Zumthor’s buildings appear to be of uncertain temporal origin, as if they have been there forever” (Zumthor, 1996, p. 6). It might be as a result of Zumthor’s way of seeing architecture, he believes that some buildings have the sense of belonging; they are the buildings that have a strong character in a place and that we might never imagine the place without them (Zumthor, 1998, p.17).

Peter Zumthor once stated that,

“thinking about daylight and artificial light I have to admit that daylight, the light on things, is so moving to me that I feel it almost as a spiritual quality”(Zumthor, 2006, p. 61).