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A Feeling of History

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While he was working to complete the Allmannajuvet Zinc Mine Museum in southern Norway in 2016, Swiss architect Peter Zumthor asked Norwegian architectural historian Mari Lending to engage in a dialogue about the project. In meandering, impressionistic style, and drawing on their favorite writers, such as Johann Peter Hebel, Stendhal, Nabokov, and T. S. Eliot, their exchanges explore how history, time, and temporalities reverberate across Zumthor’s oeuvre. Looking back, Zumthor ponders on how a feeling of history has informed his attempts at emotional reconstruction by means of building, from architectural interventions in dramatic landscapes to his design for the redevelopment of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, which conceived the building on a suitably grand urban scale.

This small, beautifully designed book records the conversation between Zumthor and Lending, accompanied by photographs taken by the renowned Swiss architectural photographer Hélène Binet. The resulting book is a surprisingly revelatory view of one of the most interesting and restlessly creative architects of our era.

80 pages, Paperback

Published October 15, 2018

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About the author

Peter Zumthor

60 books244 followers
From the Pritzker Prize website, http://www.pritzkerprize.com/laureate...

Peter Zumthor was born on April 26, 1943, the son of a cabinet maker, Oscar Zumthor, in Basel, Switzerland. He trained as a cabinet maker from 1958 to 1962. From 1963-67, he studied at the Kunstgewerbeschule, Vorkurs and Fachklasse with further studies in design at Pratt Institute in New York.

In 1967, he was employed by the Canton of Graubünden (Switzerland) in the Department for the Preservation of Monuments working as a building and planning consultant and architectural analyst of historical villages, in addition to realizing some restorations. He established his own practice in 1979 in Haldenstein, Switzerland where he still works with a small staff of fifteen. Zumthor is married to Annalisa Zumthor-Cuorad. They have three children, all adults, Anna Katharina, Peter Conradin, and Jon Paulin, and two grandchildren.

Since 1996, he has been a professor at the Academy of Architecture, Universitá della Svizzera Italiana, Mendrisio. He has also been a visiting professor at the University of Southern California Institute of Architecture and SCI-ARC in Los Angeles in 1988; at the Technische Universität, Munich in 1989; and at the Graduate School of Design, Harvard University in 1999.

His many awards include the Praemium Imperiale from the Japan Art Association in 2008 as well as the Carlsberg Architecture Prize in Denmark in 1998, and the Mies van der Rohe Award for European Architecture in 1999. In 2006, he received the Thomas Jefferson Foundation Medal in Architecture from the University of Virginia. The American Academy of Arts and Letters bestowed the Arnold W. Brunner Memorial Prize in Architecture in 2008.

In the recent book published by Barrons Educational Series, Inc. titled, Architectura, Elements of Architectural Style, with the distinguished architectural historian from Australia, Professor Miles Lewis, as general editor, the Zumthor’s Thermal Bath building at Vals is described as “a superb example of simple detailing that is used to create highly atmospheric spaces. The design contrasts cool, gray stone walls with the warmth of bronze railings, and light and water are employed to sculpt the spaces. The horizontal joints of the stonework mimic the horizontal lines of the water, and there is a subtle change in the texture of the stone at the waterline. Skylights inserted into narrow slots in the ceiling create a dramatic line of light that accentuates the fluidity of the water. Every detail of the building thus reinforces the importance of the bath on a variety of levels.”

In the book titled Thinking Architecture, first published by [Lars Müller Publishers] in 1998, Zumthor set down in his own words a philosophy of architecture. One sample of his thoughts is as follows: “I believe that architecture today needs to reflect on the tasks and possibilities which are inherently its own. Architecture is not a vehicle or a symbol for things that do not belong to its essence. 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. I believe that the language of architecture is not a question of a specific style. Every building is built for a specific use in a specific place and for a specific society. My buildings try to answer the questions that emerge from these simple facts as precisely and critically as they can.”

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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
Profile Image for Philippe.
658 reviews588 followers
January 1, 2019
Recently I spent an afternoon with three books: A Feeling of History, a conversation between Swiss architect Peter Zumthor and historian Mari Lending; Instant Light, a photo book that collects the polaroids of the Russian director Andrey Tarkovsky, and Huishoudkunde (‘Domestic Science’), a poetry collection by Flemish author Max Temmerman. Delightful how these books, completely unexpectedly, resonated with each other.

The Zumthor book deals primarily with two Norwegian projects conceived around an explicitly historical datum: the Allmanajuvet Zinc Mine Museum and the Steilneset Memorial (in memory of those perished as a result of 17th century witchcraft trials). There are also more peripheral reflections on the never-executed design for the Berlin-based Topographie des Terrors, the Kolumba Museum in Cologne and on the projected Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA). With his buildings and installations, Zumthor wants to spur visitors’ capacity for ‘emotional learning’, to bring back feelings of a lost time, to entice them to not just look at a place but into it. “I believe it is more about creating a feeling for things that are absent than about creating a feeling of presence for things lost.”

Cut to the Temmerman’s poetry collection that revolves around mysterious and mundane images of domesticity and how they connect us back to historical presences. One of the poems - Constellations of proximity - runs as follows (in my own translation):

The surface of happiness seems
a darkened room full of glowing lamplets.
The dumb devices
consolidate constellations of presence.
The remote controls, laptops and printers,
the washing machines and televisions
form galaxies of protection,
an electronic labyrinth that soothes.
A past glimmers in proximity.
Someone was here before.
I can read his traces.


Back to Zumthor who describes one of the buildings that are part of the Allmanajuvet project as a more traditional museum: “The gallery shows objects found in the mine, such as buckets, cubes of dynamite, and mining tools. The display is reminiscent of a nineteenth-century museum with small glass showcases - a kind of history museum in situ. The objects are illuminated by the daylight that trickles into the black boxes through narrow shafts from above. It is the light that once fell on this modest mining equipment.”

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So lovely to find architect and poet to stumble into one another, searching for the reassuring traces of departed others, in a room in which the darkness is punctuated by tiny islands of illuminated peace.

Onwards to Tarkovsky, who later in life was a great amateur of the Polaroid instant camera. The pictures are gorgeous, evanescent, chimerical, saturated with pronounced greenish, blueish and yellowish casts.

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Also Tarkovsky sees himself as a successor, as someone who belongs to and sustains a particular tradition. The act of remembrance then becomes an essential part of the creative act. It ties a potentially painful past to the fundamental affirmation that is embedded in an artistic image. For Tarkovsky, “remembering is a choice of love and mercy, a gamble of faith and hope that liberates the heart from the pain of events that are now over, dead and finished, towards the openness of a new and different way of life that is still connected to the present.”

I am leaning back into Temmerman’s universe with his poem ‘The nobility of generations’:

Our garden hosts the trees of yore.
In my bedroom slept the fathers
of my father. Phrases that I never
would utter, roll with foolish aplomb
over my lips as if from the mouth
of a ventriloquist. When high summer
and the hours linger, then this question
rises straight into heaven: whose lives are we living?
In winter there is no time for these concerns.
During the days of cold confined we think
hopefully like a patient about what has been
prescribed to us. Nothing is ever finished
and so we move on, with the
resignation of a typesetter. From generation to generation
to generation: we pass on knowledge, and on.


Tarkovsky: “The true artist always serves immortality, striving to immortalize the world and man within the world.”

Zumthor: “Essential to the notion of emotional reconstruction, as I use the term, is that it has the quality of a shared experience. I can compose a piece of architecture with materials, light, shadow and sound, and give it a presence most people would be able to associate with something in their personal landscape of emotions. We are all come from somewhere, we are all full of highly personal images that are dear to us; we are all full of history.”

And so we find three artists working in different media - the still and moving image, the written word, space materialised - to establish bridges between the past and the present and the future, between the idiosyncratic and the universal, between protection and exposure, fate and contingency.

I’m giving the final word to Max:

Futurism

There’s poetry involved, rectilinear
and inflexible as a schema.
But there is also a small sorrow, almost invisible.
Barely larger than the word.
And we keep on careening. Nothing will be
as it never was.
It starts now. And now. And now.
Everyone is a remembrance.
And every remembrance
is a landscape within a landscape.


Note: I posted an identical review for each of the three books mentioned. Some specific comments about the Zumthor book. It's a small booklet, quite expensive, but a nice object in itself. Zumthor's reflections are illuminating, but his interlocutor Mari Lending is too keen on displaying her erudition. In a subsequent reading I'm planning to skip her extensive interventions. I should also add that the text is accompanied by a limited number of black-and-white photographs by Hélène Binet. In a short postscript Zumthor explains that these are images of paved paths on the Acropolis, designed and built by the Greek architect Dimitris Pikionis (1887-1968) and incorporating stones and rubble collected from older buildings all over Athens.
Profile Image for Alex Pontes.
7 reviews
December 27, 2020
Loved it. Zumthor’s architecture always connects with history and emotions in his buildings and writings. A true architect, one of my favourites.
67 reviews
August 30, 2021
Imprescindível para quem queira conhecer a sensibilidade rara de PZ perante todas as questões sensíveis da Arquitectura e reabilitação. Reflexões que nos levam para lá da Arquitectura e nos aproximam da criação.
October 3, 2020
هنگام طراحی برای من آسان تر است فکر کنم که فضا تاریک است، خیلی سیاه و سپس اجازه دهم که نور وارد شود. نور به مصالح می‌تابد و مصالح زیبا به نظر می‌رسند. نور به سطوح برخورد می‌کند. شکل و فرم به واسطه نور انعطاف پذیرتر می‌شوند من همواره آن ها را تغییر می‌دهم تا صدای مصالح، خواص مصالح واقعی و تناسب میان نور و سایه با هم هماهنگ و هم ساز شوند.
Profile Image for Katri.
610 reviews5 followers
April 1, 2023
I love Peter Zumthor's works. And I love reading his thoughts on design.

"When designing, it's easier for me to think about a space as dark, completely pitch-black, and then allow the light to come in. The light hits the material, and the material becomes beautiful. Light hitting surfaces--it's magic." P. 67
Profile Image for Jemma Gold.
11 reviews1 follower
April 20, 2024
Yes, I will be adding the many books I will be reading for my dissertation. That aside, this short book is essential reading for architects and designers.
41 reviews
February 18, 2021
Weak and light. (نقد فارسی در انتها)
Why would it really have to be published as a book when it is a web interview almost?
The book impaired by the gap between the interviewer and the architect's mentality. As a result, she talks for herself, and peter answers to himself. You can easily remove all the questions and only read the answers and almost lose nothing.
Zumthor's words, compared to his other book " Thinking Architecture", are less riched. There are, of course, a few important tips on the history and his design approach.
I wish this text was summed up and edited. The result was an interesting short article about the analysis of peters works and atmosphere.
I wish there was an architect who interviewed Zumthor.
The book is failed.

ضعیف و لاغر. چرا واقعا باید چنین متنی که نهایتا یک مصاحبه اینترنتی هست به عنوان کتاب چاپ شود؟
بدترین جنبه کتاب ارتباط نداشتن سوال های پرسش کننده به فضای فکری پاسخ دهنده هست. در نتیجه پرسش کننده برای خودش سخنرانی میکند و زومتور هم حرف خودش را میگوید. به راحتی می توانید تمام سوالات پرسش کننده را حذف کنید و فقط پاسخ را بخوانید. تقریبا چیزی از دست نمی دهید.
گفته های زومتور هم در مقایسه با کتاب دیگرش "معماری‌اندیشی" کم مایه تر است. البته نکته های مهم معدودی درباره تاریخ و جهت طراحی اش در زمینه گرایی ارائه میکند.
کاش این متن ویرایش، سوال ها حذف و گفته های زومتور خلاصه میشد. یک مقاله کوتاه جالب درباره تحلیل کارهایش و زاویه نگاهش به دست می آمد.
ای کاش یک پرسش گر معمار با زومتور مصاحبه میکرد.
کتاب از دست رفته ایست.
Profile Image for Mohadeseh.
17 reviews
June 27, 2021
این کتاب در واقع ضربه ی نهایی سه گانه ی زومتور هست که با محوریت پروژه ی موزه ی معدنش نوشته شده.

از نگاه زومتور معماری نمایش دهنده ی زندگیست.
نقطه ی شاخص او در بناهایی که خلق میکند برخوردش با مصالح بناها است.

محور کتاب؛ مصاحبه ی بین ماری لندینگ و زومتور است.

در مقدمه ی ماری لندینگ، ابتدا کلماتی مطرح میشوند که در ذهن ما پیوند میان مدرنیته و صنعت معدن را یادآور میشوند.

سپس نظریه ی کریستال استندال در باب عشق را مطرح میکند و افسانه ای نروژی که هر عاشق چوبی را در معدن کریستال می اندازد و بعد از مدتی دسته ای کریستال به معشوق خود پیش کش میکند.

لندینگ معتقد است این نظریه و افسانه درگیر تاریخ و زمان است و این‌همان وجه اشتراک با کارهای زومتور است.( عامل زمان، برای تبدیل پروژه به یک مسئله تاریخی_فرهنگی مهم است)

در *سوال اول* لندینگ از زومتور، این مسئله مطرح میشود که آثار زومتور با آگاهی زیادی نسبت به تاریخ ساخته شده اند.

زومتور از محل تحصیل خودش صحبت میکنه که رویکردی باهاوسی داشته و تلاش همه در طراحی یک نوع تاریخ ستیزی بوده. اما بعدها فهمیده که هر آنچیزی که اطرافش هست مرتبط با تاریخه و چیزی که باعث آرامش خاطر او بوده این مسئله ی " بخشی از جهان بودن" هست.

زومتور درباره ی ساختمانهایی که طراحی میکنه میگه که *دوست داره اونها جزئی از بست�� باشند*

و ذکر این نکته در پایان این سوال ضروری هست که منظور زومتور تاریخی نیست که در محیط آکادمیک یاد میگیریم.

بلکه منظورش احساس تاریخیه. حسی که در چشم اندازها پنهان شده و باعث همون احساس ج��ئی از یک کل بودن میشه.

ماری لندینگ یک تاریخ دان هست. او به تفاوت بین حقیقت و واقعیت اشاره میکنه.

حقیقت؛ دستخوش تغییر نیست
ولی واقعیت؛ با گذر زمان تغییر میکنه.
از حس مکان حرف میزنه، حسی تاریخی که بالاتر از حس تاریخی اسناده.

زومتور میگه توی هر سایتی که میخواد طراحی کنه ابتدا به نظاره ی اون سایت میپزدازه و سعی میکنه سایت را بفهمه و به احساساتش اجازه جاری شدن میده. بعد از اون شروع به خلق میکنه( حس میکنم یک نگاه شاعرانه ای نسبت به بستر داره که اجازه میده در خوانش محل طراحی بروز پیدا کنه)

اون معتقده وقتی بلد باشیم خوب نگاه کنیم میتونیم خوب کشف ��نیم و این یک چالش نیست.

اون همواره در تلاشه که بازدید کنندگان بنا ابتدا حس مکان را درک کنند.

لندینگ خیلی هم موافق رویکرد زومتور نیست و نقدی بر اون وارد میکنه که پدیدار شناسی اش کوته بینانه است. زومتور میگه همیشه دنبال شگفتی بوده و این شگفتی براش حاصل دیدنه و میتونه توی یک مکان قصه هایی که بر بنا رفته و جزیی از تاریخشه را درک کنه.

زومتور معتقده معماری میتونه موضوع های از دست رفته را احیا کنه و احساسات را تهییج کنه.
در واقع معماری خیلی فراتر از واژه ها میره و مفاهیمی را یادآوری میکنه که شاید فراموش شدند.


پیشنهادش به معماران جدید اینه که عجله ای برای وارد کردن منطق در کارهاشون نداشته باشن و اول طراحی حسابی به کشف و شهود بپردازند.

ماری لندینگ از زومتور میپرسه اون چیزی که تو بهش میگی تاریخ در واقع بیشتر زمان هست نه تاریخ. یک مدل تاریخ نهفته در اشیا.

پیتر زومتور در جوابش میگه که از نظرش همینطوره زمان دارای حسه و این احساس خودش دارای فرمه.

زومتور میگه این موزه( موزه معدن) یک موزه ی سربازه بیشتر از اینکه کارکردش مثل موزه های مدرن باشه روی مسیری که ردپاهای معدن بوده تحقیق کرده و یه دور رفتار کارگران معدن را برای خودش بازترسیم گرده تا مسیر گردشگری موزه شکل بگیره. به این علت مداخله اش در حد اتاقک های سیاهی هست که یاداور دنیای صنعتی هستند و توی اون اشیا نمایش داده میشن . توی اتاقک ها تاریک و تنگه و اشیا از بیرون نور میگیرن و در واقع یه جورایی حس معدن را القا میکنه که یه نور از جایی میاد تو که متوجه نمیشیم. و بعد میرسن به یه پنجره رو به منظر.
زومتور میگه مخاطب از یک جا دیگه گردشگر نیست بلکه داره در مکان تعمق میکنه و دچار کشف و شهوده.

لندینگ به دو پروژه ی زومتور در نروژ اشاره میکنه که یکی همین موزه معدن است و دیگری یادمان استینلست. هر دو یک وجه اشتراک دارند اینکه بر بکر بودن مجموعه تاکید دارند اما نحوه ی برخوردشان با موضوع متفاوت است.


زومتور میگه که در موزه معدن با چیزی روبه رو بوده در حالیکه توی پروژه ی یادمان هیچ چیزی به جز اسم آن وجود نداشته است. در واقع در پروژه ی یادمان تنها باید واقعه ای را یاداور میشد که هیچ شکل فیزیکی مشخصی نداشته.


لندینگ میگه شما معمار فرم محوری نیستید و در بناهایی که ساختید یک همگنی ای دیده میشه و یک جور اتصال با زمین.
زومتور در جواب میگه همه ی بناهاش به محیط توجه دارند و برای همینه که اتصالشون با زمین مشخصه و بعد به تجربه ی متفاوتش در موزه لس انجلس میپردازه.


توی این پروژه متفاوت اون میخواسته تعریف همیشگی موزه را که به صورت دایره المعارف اشیا باشه کنار بزاره. میخواسته برای "اشیا بی خانمان" مسیر آزادی را طراحی کنه که در پیوند باشهر هست نه در پیوند با اشیا و این پلان منعطف باعث بشه در موزه پویایی اتفاق بیوفتد و مسیر توسط بازدید کننده انتخاب شود.

زومتور میگه توی موزه لس انجلس قرار بوده درباره ی اشیا متفاوتی صحبت بشه نه فقط یک اشیا پس سعی کرده موزه ای که طراحی میکنه با آغوشی باز و بی طرفانه فقط اشیا را نمایش بده.

ایده ی زومتور درباره ی ارتقا موزه داری و این حرکت آزاد بین اشیا مورد توجه لندینگ قرار میگیره و میگه براش یادآور راه رفتن توی سایت باستانی و الهه خاطره است.
فضا، مصالح و نور چیزهایی هستندکه زومتور اونها را مصالح معماری مینامد.
زومتور میگه من ترجیح میدم فکر کنم توی یک جای تاریکم و بعد از خودم بپرسم دوست داری کجا نور وارد کنی( در واقع با نور طراحی کنه)

آخر کتاب به این میرسه که چیزی که زومتور دنبالشه بازسازی احساسی هست. اینکه انسانها متصل به رشته ی گذشته و اینده اند و جزیی از این هستی هستند.

اون میگه اوایل مدرنیته گاها ادمها میترسیدند بگن ما از تاریخ خوشمون میاد. ولی کم کم به این نتیجه رسیدند تاریخ حضور پررنگی در بازسازی احساسی و ایجاد اتمسفر داره.

موهولی ناگی: حافظه فرهنگی چیزی را در انسان لمس میکند که از حضور آنی او قدیمی تر و بادوام تر است. چیزی که او را به حرکت وامیدارد؛ زیرا که در آن تکامل فناناپذیر خویشتن را مشاهده میکند.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Profile Image for Kimia.
33 reviews7 followers
April 3, 2023
نظراتی که از زومتور میخونیم شعار و کانسپت و ایده ی صرف نیست. نظراتیه که در کارهاش عینا دیده شده و ما با روند طراحیش و ذهنی که این طراحی رو جلو برده آشناتر میشیم و تاریخ و احساس از دید زومتور رو میتونیم شکل بدیم. ولی ترجمه‌ی بد. خیلی بد!
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