In Germany, the Swiss pavilion at the Expo 2000 in Hannover (1997-2000), the Kunstmuseum Kolumba in Cologne (1997-2007), the Chapel of Saint Nicholas Flüe in Hof Scheidtweiler, Mechernich. In Austria, he built the Kunsthaus in Bregenz (1989-1997), the glass and concrete cube which looks out over Lake Constance which “from outside - he says - looks like a lamp, it absorbs the changing light of the sky and the mist from the lake it reflects the light and colour according to the viewing angle, the daylight and the weather conditions”. All of this within a temporal dimension”.įrom the mid-1990s, Zumthor intensified his work abroad. The public observe the spaces and have the sensation they have already seen them, but never in this way. “Visitors,” said the architect in an interview given in Italy, “sense the meaning of the building, and experience and perceive many sensations, moving through spaces which enclose a design.
The main element of the project - in which areas, floors and even some furniture is covered entirely in locally-sourced gneiss - is however the sensation that the water, stone and light (which enters mainly from above, through skylights which provide an almost scenographic feeling) provoke in visitors.
The same result was obtained in Vals, an intricate labyrinth of baths dug into the rock, which, in the monographic book he curated himself, Zumthor defined “a love story between stone and water” (1997). Made entirely out of wood, with an almost maniacal attention to detail (throughout the project he experimented with models which reached a scale of 1:1), the chapel is one of the first examples of those forms of architecture with an atmosphere which was mystical and monastic, yet also emotional, linked to the physical experimentation of the architecture which characterised its form. Of these last three works, the small religious building was to mark Zumthor’s international success, thanks to the balanced juxtaposition of archetypical elements from rural tradition – represented by the exterior of the chapel – and the extremely rigorous spatial solutions.
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