Journal Interview | Peter Zumthor

Zukunft der Architektur

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News & Politics

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• Deutsche-Welle
• Germany
• Deutschland
• DW-TV
• Information
• Journal
• Interview
• Architekt
• Peter
• Zumthor
• Schweiz
• Nobelpreis
• Pritzker-Preis

[joaovpinto]

You could put on english subtitles to this interview so that a larger audience could understand it

[JeanEmar3]

Translation please.

[Derdeinemutter]

Zumthor ist Boss.

[bulloxdawn]

@highq83 Thanks a million! It's so great to know everything from these texts as Zumthor is one of my most favorite architects:)

[highq83]

I felt the urge to make this interview of a modest but nevertheless uncompromising architect accessible to a larger public,trying to stay close to what he said, as good as I could.I hope it inspires you .

Rainer Traube:Peter Zumthor, ath the beginning of the year you won the german Architekturpreis for the Kolumba museum and later the Pritzker price.You've always avoided the world of star architects and distanced yourself from that, aren't you now on the way to become a star-architect yourself?

[highq83]

PZ:I don't know exactly what it is,this story is an exteriour view.the interiour view,thtats our work,is still the same.I hope it won't change.

RT:your museum building,Kolumba in Cologne,has been built upon the ruins of a gothic church.Visitors,clients and critics are all excited in the same way.one critic wrote:this is a valid answer to the increasing spectacularization of architecutre.it it like that?do you see yourself as an antipole to spectacular architecture between Dubai and Bilbao?

[highq83]

PZ:I'm working here and I'm working near the buildings,therefore I don't have a view from outside at my work,this wouldn't do me any good,I'm not looking for that.Everything comes frome the inside.We're trying to do the job as good as possible concering program and PLACE.If we receive compliments and people like it,that's great,but to position myself in relation to the others,that's not an issue for me,you get the picture?

[highq83]

PZ:We are here and we just do our work. That is more an issue of yours! (laughter)

RT:an journalistic issue or an issue of the media.This menas you don't react to current tendencies in architecture,but you react to the place,where you're building.

PZ:Exactly,you understand better if you imagine a boy,who fulfils his dream,who goes there,looks at the place,searchs for what it needs and wants to do it as beautiful,good and harmonic as possible,thats who I am.

[highq83]

RT:I'd like to talk about that dream.Slowness belongs to it,you're known for taking yourself a lot of time,how do you respond if a client says:time, money,this needs to be faster and cheaper.

PZ:I try to clarify this in the beginning.If he's all about time and money,he's wrong at my office,because I'm doing author-architecture,which means I'm creating a composition,something unique with many good soloists for a certain place.this needs to be his ambition, doesnt it?

[highq83]

PZ:Otherwise I tell him don't come here.Later we try do do it as fast as possible.

RT:and the client,who's working with you knows a bit about your requirements and your terms and conditions,he knows in what he's engaging,namly,how you already said,to work with an author-architect,instead of a service provider.by doing so,do you position yourself close to art,namly author-cinema,writers?

PZ:I'm standing in a long tradition,which is called Baukunst,that's not my invention but someone elses.

[highq83]

PZ:This is my tradition,not ART,but architecture as the art of building,and this is an applied art,which we all know and it obeys certain criteria,which are similar to criteria of doing music, literature or art,but needs to build a bridge to... maybe like a conductor, I'm a comductor and composer and need 200 or 300 leading edge soloists so i can enact my play.

RT:would you build a train station?

PZ:of course!you might remember in Hanover I built a wooden pavilion,