Peter Zumthor

Alan de Botton presents the latest conceptual images and models of Peter Zumthor's first UK based project.
An interesting AJ interview by Patrick Lynch with Zumthor from 2009: here, and an extract below.
'In Search of a Lost Architecture” begins: ‘When I think of architecture, images come into my mind… Sometimes I can almost feel a particular door handle in my hand, a piece of metal shaped like the back of a spoon …. When I went into my aunt’s garden… I remember the sound of the ravel under my feet… 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’. [Thinking Architecture, Birkhäuser 1998].... Peter Zumthor: 'Basically I’ve come to think that I work like an author. There was a time when I thought that all architects work like authors, but when I looked around I saw that they were implementers and service providers. This is not my world. So I work like a composer writes his music, a writer writes his book and a painter… and so on...In your case and in any other case it is a matter of “what we know” and what is inside us. Most things that are inside us we don’t know! So, we have all these many sayings of artists, like Picasso, who said that: “art is not about inventing, art is about discovering”. This is nothing new. Everybody says this in different fields. It’s obvious that what is inside you ... – this is the stuff that you are working with as an author if you “create”....If you make something new, this is where everything comes from. It does not come from following ideologies. It is great if you become part of the church, Modernism or whatever, then of course it consoles you and it supports you and makes part of a group. You are a Chelsea fan….' Patrick Lynch: 'Or a Zumthor fan….' Peter Zumthor: 'Ha Ha! Yeah, true. This is also human. But in order to create something this is not a good thing. Better to be yourself.' AJ