Be an Architect like Peter Zumthor

After reading Jeremy Till’s article Here, There, and North of Nowhere, I felt what he said about global vs. critical regionalism architecture contradicted a lot of what I’ve learned during my graduate and undergraduate education. For example, he argues that: 

“…global/local is not an either/or but a both /and... It is a challenge to architects to open up their radar to a wider set of issues than merely the aesthetic and tectonic, and instead follow the Ariadne’s thread through the urban register with all its social, political and physical connotations. Only then can we possibly invoke the word ‘critical’ that Frampton introduces but never fulfils”.

Though I understand his argument, I still find myself naturally drawn to architecture that addresses the local, aesthetics, and tectonics. Additionally, I feel that buildings that do critical regionalism well can still have global influence. One architect I truly admire is Peter Zumthor. I remember learning about the Thermal Baths in Vals when I was a sophomore in undergrad. The Thermal Baths had a huge impact on me and made me realize how architecture can be memorable, atmospheric, and moving. The power of his architecture is directly related to his awareness of critical regionalism.  

“Mountain, stone, water – building in the stone, building with the stone, into the mountain, building out of the mountain, being inside the mountain – how can the implications and the sensuality of the association of these words be interpreted, architecturally?”

Zumthor designed the bath rooms below a grass roof allowing it to be half buried within the hillside and in its natural surroundings. He utilized layer after layer of locally quarried Valser Quarzite slabs utilizing the thickness allowed by the material to determine the texture and scale of the building’s walls. He further explains his architecture theory in his lecture “Atmospheres”:

“What I am thinking of are my human surroundings—although they won’t only be mine—and of the building becoming part of people’s lives, a place where children grow up…It increases the pleasure of my work when I imagine a certain building being remembered by someone in 25 years’ time. Perhaps because that was where he kissed his first girlfriend of whatever. To put that in perspective: that quality is far more important to me than the idea that the building will still be mentioned in architectural works in 35 years.”

As an architect, Zumthor’s projects have a global influence on architecture theory today, however, it was because he designed towards critical regionalism first.  Though Till argues that it is not an “either/or but a both/and”, I think Zumthor’s approach is best with critical regionalism first  and global second. I want to be an architect like Peter Zumthor.  I find it more powerful to design projects at a critical regional level that considers local materials, how they are incorporated within their surroundings, and the impact they have on people’s lives at the human scale. Critical regionalism can have a global impact if the architecture is designed well and valued not only by the locals, but also inspiring others around the world.