Therme Vals 1 / 4 "Mountains, stone, water, building in stone, building stone, inside the mountain, building off the mountain, being inside the mountain - how can they be interpreted the implications and the sensuality in the association of these words ? "Architecturally? The whole concept was designed with these questions, and all that took shape step by step. "Peter Zumthor.
There are not many architects who have built a building on the list of protected heritage during his lifetime, let alone two years from completion.
Peter Zumthor is not an architect either.
For some, Zumthor is the best living architect today. His works are few, but achieved an austere and transcendent beauty that comes from the regional trend of his work (most of its buildings are in Graubunden, the easternmost canton of Switzerland) and an unparalleled connection with the material and artisans who make possible their buildings.
On the east side of a small valley in the Swiss canton of Grisons (Graubunden), about 1200m. above sea level, is the hot spring that has marked the character of the village of Vals, organized along the river valley Valserrhein.
Besides the hot spring and the hot water springs to 30 °, install a small hotel-spa in 1893. The hotel was modernized in 1960 became a complex of thermal baths, which, however, became obsolete as tourist facilities were relatively more accessible people.
In 1996, he inaugurated the new building designed by Zumthor, after two years and four
construction project. The order became final in 1990 after a contest that is
had won in 1986.
Zumthor soon realized that the stone (quartzite / gneiss) was local
the perfect material for constructing the building, strength, flexural strength and tensile strength at low temperatures
and mechanical abrasion resistance. 60,000 pieces of this stone in different finished
processed differently and are used to build the new complex.
The interior space is generated continuously. Develops as a geometric cave, growing in size as one moves away from the narrow caverns located on the side of the mountain and is approaching the light at the front. In this area of \u200b\u200bthe building there is a change of perception. The outside penetrates through big holes and merges with the system of caverns excavated. The building itself resembles a large porous rock.
In structural terms, the walls form a homogeneous compound overlapping blocks of stone and reinforced concrete .. Everything is monolithically conceived. The large area
continuum between the blocks are built sequentially. The perspective is always controlled, generating a set of views and ensuring the unique spatial quality of each element of the sequence, while respecting their role and significance in the set.
The building is conceived as an architectural structure that avoids technical order naturalistic but at the same time highlights the idea of \u200b\u200bthe excavation and implementation on the ground.
is a work that has a clear impact on their environment, but with a decent respect thereof that can enjoy the beauty of both.
"And play with measures of architecture work to serve the correct size of things is led by the desire to create degrees of intimacy, gradations of closeness and distance. I like to put the materials, surfaces and contours, bright or dull, in light of the sun, raising deep and mysterious mass graduations of shade and darkness, so that displayed all the charm of light on objects. Until the whole match. "
Peter Zumthor Architects
contemporaries Kester Rattenbury, Robert Bevan, Kiera
