Words matter. These are the best Peter Zumthor Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
I work a little bit like a sculptor. When I start, my first idea for a building is with the material. I believe architecture is about that. It’s not about paper, it’s not about forms. It’s about space and material.
My buildings should have an emotional core – a space which, in itself, has an emotional nice feeling.
When I concentrate on a specific site or place for which I am going to design a building, I try to plumb its depths, its form, its history and its sensuous qualities.
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.
Every time I imagine a garden in an architectural setting, it turns into a magical place. I think of gardens I have seen, that I believe I have seen, that I long to see, surrounded by simple walls, columns, arcades or the facades of buildings – sheltered places of great intimacy where I want to stay for a long time.
Architecture has its place in the concrete world. This is where it exists. This is where it makes its statement.
I design for the use of a building and the place and for the people who use it… the reputation for arrogance comes because when work is offered to me, I look whether I can find a genuine interest in quality.
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.
I think space, architectural space, is my thing. It’s not about facade, elevation, making image, making money. My passion is creating space.
There is still a real need for good quality architecture, not paper architecture, but the real stuff.
Normally, architects render a service. They implement what other people want. This is not what I do. I like to develop the use of the building together with the client, in a process, so that as we go along we become more intelligent.
I can’t be bought with money. If someone calls me and asks me to work for them for three or four years, and they’ll pay me well to build their vacation home, I ask myself why I should work three or four years on something like that.
Architecture to me is whole. I cannot say I only care about this 25% and the other 75% I let go… it’s just I want to work the way I want to work. In my shop, you can order certain things and other things you cannot. They are not available.
Architecture is exposed to life. If its body is sensitive enough, it can assume a quality that bears witness to past life.
The bottom line may be that my inventing buildings is, indeed, a very private kind of activity. But it’s done to be shared. It is comforting and consoling. From the reactions I get I can see I’m not doing something strange.
I’ve built two wooden houses near Vals. I built them for my wife. Those were private projects.
I work anywhere between three and 10 years on a project, depending on the size. My lifetime is finite. Therefore, I have to look carefully at how many projects I want to put into my lifetime.
My first buildings, when I was about 30, were rejected for aesthetic reasons.
I need a close contact to the client, whoever it is, and a commitment of the client to go out and do a process together. I want to do the best for him. I need his respect and his patience. I want to work with a sophisticated person who’s interested in a good building and not in my name.
I’m not mainly interested in what buildings mean as symbols or vehicles for ideas.
