Sunday, January 2, 2022

Thinking Architecture

 
St. Benedict Chapel, Sumvitg, Graubünden, Switzerland, designed by Peter Zumthor (photo by  p2cl, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons)
 
Like 2020 before it, 2021 was hardly a banner year. Many people continued to suffer from stress and anxiety wrought by too many, now familiar issues: the COVID-19 pandemic, a toxic level of political divisiveness, social injustice, the accelerating impacts of climate change, and more. In my case, work burdens and family issues compounded my stress and anxiety, manifesting chronic headaches and bothersome muscle tension in my neck and shoulders. I needed to decompress, so a week away from the office between Christmas and the New Year was exactly what the doctor ordered. I indulged in some “me” time, which included leisurely reading the book Thinking Architecture by the Pritzker Prize-winning Swiss architect Peter Zumthor.
 
I previously wrote about Peter Zumthor back in 2011 as part of my review of the book In Praise of Slowness by Carl Honoré. As I described him then, Zumthor is unquestionably the leading proponent of the Slow Architecture movement. Slow Architecture is about the creation, appreciation, and enjoyment of all that is careful, that is textured, and that stimulates the senses in buildings. Slow Architecture is an approach to design and construction, a philosophy of “how” rather than a manifesto of “what.”
 
Zumthor’s process of building design and construction is one that is more patient, more careful, and more detailed. It is a process in which the pace required by human craft dictates how construction is carried out and the passage of time adds a sense of delight rather than decay. Zumthor’s Therme Vals spa complex is often cited as a seminal work of Slow Architecture. Its defining characteristics include the process by which it was realized—a protracted six-year gestation period of reflection, analysis, and design—as well as the sensory aspects of the architectural experience. Therme Vals is perfectly harmonized with its surroundings, a product of Zumthor’s intimate familiarity with the site and commitment to the use of local materials.
 
Interior view of the Therme Vals, designed by Peter Zumthor (photo by Kazunori Fujimoto, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons)
 
On the occasion of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) awarding him its Gold Medal in 2013, The Guardian pronounced Zumthor to be a “man of mystery” possessing a “mythic reputation as a reclusive mountain-dwelling hermit, a monk of materials, with standards so exacting that few clients have the patience, or deep enough pockets, to indulge his uncompromising approach.” Practicing his craft in the tiny municipality of Haldenstein (home to a mere 1,033 residents, located in the Alpine canton of Graubünden), Zumthor and his small staff of youthful acolytes have since 1979 produced a steady, albeit limited body of artisanal work characterized by its phenomenological underpinnings.  
 
Thinking Architecture is a slender volume. The expanded third edition I own is just over 100 pages in length. Despite its brevity, it provides the reader with an unstinting glimpse into the mind of a renowned architect.
 
Central to the book and Zumthor’s approach to his work is a recognition of the power of perhaps forgotten memories to be rekindled by experiences with new places and buildings. We all have such memories (many buried), fond musings about times and places that were comforting and mattered to us. Specific sensations may trigger these welcome recollections: the scent of freshly baked bread that fills a kitchen; the reverberant chords of a pipe organ within the nave of a cathedral; the warmth of the sun on your face on a cloudless winter’s day as you sit on a south-facing porch or the dappling of its light upon the pale wall beside you. Zumthor believes such individual, sensual experiences enrich our subsequent encounters with architecture that is particularly evocative by virtue of its spatial and emotional dimensions.
 
“When I design a building, I frequently find myself sinking into old, half-forgotten memories, and then I try to recollect what the remembered architectural situation was really like, what it had meant to me at the time, and I try to think how it could help me now to revive that vibrant atmosphere pervaded by the simple presence of things, in which everything had its own specific place and form. And although I cannot trace any special forms, there is a hint of fullness and richness that makes me think: this I have seen before.”
 
The weight Zumthor assigns in his work to remembrances of things past brings to mind Marcel Proust’s allegorical search for truth experienced through the involuntary recall of childhood memories in the French author’s novel In Search of Lost Time. Like Proust, Zumthor recounts cues encountered in everyday life and the associations they evoke without conscious effort.
 
Passages from Thinking Architecture read like narrative fiction:
 
“A glass partition divided up the length of the narrow corridor of the old hotel. The wing of the door below, a firmly fixed pane of glass above, no frame, the panes clamped and held at the corners by two metal clasps. Normally done, nothing special. Certainly not a design by an architect. But I liked the door. Was it because of the proportions of the two panes of glass, the form and position of the clamps, the gleaming of the glass in the muted colors of the dark corridor, or was it because the upper pane of glass, which was taller than the average-height swing door below it, emphasized the height of the corridor? I did not know.”
 
In a sense, many of our most vivid architectural experiences are self-biographical. Zumthor says architects should design with images in mind, and it is the images (memories) they gather during their childhood that resonate with and elicit recall of everyone's own cherished experiences.
 
The extent to which the architectural design process is subjective—and beyond the pragmatic aspects of programming, design, and construction, it is—is a basis for a design’s presence. Zumthor works on his drawings for a project until they “reach the delicate point of representation when the prevailing mood [he] seeks emerges . . .” He suggests architects should defer analysis until after processing the emotions they wish to associate with their designs.
 
Peter Zumthor
(Photo by KovacsDaniel, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons)
 
It wasn’t until I reached the end of Thinking Architecture that I realized the book is a collection of separate essays and transcribed lectures, rather than conceived as a single treatise. I did sense this was the case; nevertheless, they do coalesce to present a satisfying and recognizable whole, one that coheres as a rich expression of an important architect’s thoughts regarding his life’s work.
 
I have no illusions about the coming year. Though it may pleasantly surprise, I fully expect 2022 will present many of the same challenges as 2021, including a deficit of precious time. I would like nothing else but to be able to lavish the same level of care and attention to each of my projects as Zumthor does with his. Realistically though, ample time during my working years will always be a resource in short supply. There is consolation in being able to think about architecture—about my life’s pursuit—in much the same, reflective way Peter Zumthor has done. Reading Thinking Architecture was time very much well-spent.  
  

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