Top 34 Peter Zumthor Quotes
#1. Details, when they are successful, are not mere decoration. They do not distract or entertain. They lead to an understanding of the whole of which they are an inherent part.
Peter Zumthor
#2. 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.
Peter Zumthor
#3. If I look at history, it seems that most wars and most cruel things have been done by men and not by women.
Peter Zumthor
#4. My buildings should have an emotional core - a space which, in itself, has an emotional nice feeling.
Peter Zumthor
#5. In order to design buildings with a sensuous connection to life, one must think in a way that goes far beyond form and construction.
Peter Zumthor
#6. 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.
Peter Zumthor
#7. Architecture has its place in the concrete world. This is where it exists. This is where it makes its statement.
Peter Zumthor
#8. My relationship to plants becomes closer and closer. They make me quiet; I like to be in their company.
Peter Zumthor
#10. What I try to do is the art of building, and the art of building is the art of construction; it is not only about forms and shapes and images.
Peter Zumthor
#11. 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.
Peter Zumthor
#12. I'm a passionate architect ... I do not work for money
Peter Zumthor
#13. My first buildings, when I was about 30, were rejected for aesthetic reasons.
Peter Zumthor
#14. 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.
Peter Zumthor
#15. Small museums are great. Big museums are a drag.
Peter Zumthor
#16. I've said goodbye to the overworked notion that architecture has to save the world.
Peter Zumthor
#17. If, early on, you know how things are put together, then you can build. The architect is in charge of making - he is not an artist.
Peter Zumthor
#18. I am convinced that a good building must be capable of absorbing the traces of human life and taking on a specific richness ... I think of the patina of age on materials, of innumerable small scratches on surfaces, of varnish that has grown dull and brittle, and of edges polished by use.
Peter Zumthor
#19. 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.
Peter Zumthor
#20. Presence is like a gap in the flow of history, where all of [a] sudden it is not past and not future.
Peter Zumthor
#21. I think space, architectural space, is my thing. It's not about facade, elevation, making image, making money. My passion is creating space.
Peter Zumthor
#22. There was a time when I experienced architecture without thinking about it,
Peter Zumthor
#23. Architecture is exposed to life. If its body is sensitive enough, it can assume a quality that bears witness to past life.
Peter Zumthor
#24. 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.
Peter Zumthor
#25. There is still a real need for good quality architecture, not paper architecture, but the real stuff.
Peter Zumthor
#26. 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.
Peter Zumthor
#27. I've built two wooden houses near Vals. I built them for my wife. Those were private projects.
Peter Zumthor
#28. If you're lucky, and a building succeeds, the real product has many more dimensions than you can ever imagine. You have the sun, the light, the rain, the birds, the feel.
Peter Zumthor
#29. In a society that celebrates the inessential, architecture can put up a resistance, counteract the waste of forms and meanings and speak its own language.
Peter Zumthor
#30. 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.
Peter Zumthor
#31. I grew up in a craftsman's home, where things were done with our own hands. I did cabinetmaking for four years and I hated it.
Peter Zumthor
#32. 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.
Peter Zumthor
#33. 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.
Peter Zumthor
#34. I'm not mainly interested in what buildings mean as symbols or vehicles for ideas.
Peter Zumthor
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