P. Zumthor Swiss Pavilion at Expo 2000 in Hanover
Project type
And again, referring to his apprenticeship as a furniture-maker in his father's workshop: "I grew up building concrete things... I'm a carpenter in this sense, in the attempt to get to know the material I work with, its limits, its potential, the effect time will have on it..."
In the Swiss Pavilion for Expo 2000 in Hanover, the intuition in his design originates in a common, everyday image: simple stacking of wooden boards in an ordinary carpenter's stockpile or warehouse.
The 3000 cubic metres of the small building are composed of fully 45,000 boards of unseasoned wood, assembled without adhesives: the 9 m high walls divide up the internal space according to a complex maze-like logic, while ceilings made of larch beams rest on vertical beams of Scotch pine.
They are held in place by steel cables connected to spring tie rods with an elegant minimal design, "following" the nature of the wood as a changing, living material.
On the subject of the expressive potential of the material, Zumthor says: "A Spanish colleague once asked me how I imagined a wooden house. I had a sudden vision of a block of solid wood, a dense volume of horizontal layers sculpted into regular forms A house like this would change shape, dilate and contract, increase and decrease in height: phenomena which should be an integral part of its design."
For this reason the materials he uses in his buildings are not subjected to treatments intended to preserve them unchanged over time: "I am very concerned about how my buildings age, that they should be economical to maintain. I want to achieve something lasting, durable with my architecture. But I like to introduce natural elements and phenomena into my architecture which reflect the passage of time. For instance, my church is made of wood. Just like an old farmhouse, it will darken in the sun; the southern façade will become black, while the northern façade will become silvery."
In the Vals Spa, for instance, it is the presence of water which suggests entirely new expressive effects.
As the architect says, "The water in the Vals Spa becomes reddish in contact with air. Thus where it flows over cement in certain points, it has deposited reddish oxides on the grey cement, creating a beautiful effect".
This is why light, wind and rain are permitted to penetrate the exposition pavilion: the material thus seems to "breathe" with the natural elements, following their changing rhythms.
The final effect is similar to that of a Japanese temple, a form of architecture which Zumthor particularly loves.
As the architect says, "Traditional Japanese spaces.. are identified with the events or phenomena which take place in them: what this means is that they acquire meaning only in relation to the passage of time...".
And he adds: "Much of my design method consists in simply listening to the material I'm using, paying attention to its needs. In Spanish, wood - madera -, mother - madre - and material - material - are similar words".
The flooring makes no concession to formalism either: simple cast concrete, with no colour added; nor do the scarce furnishings, made of glass and cortén: but the evenness of the smooth, bluish surface of the concrete has the effect of further enhancing the vibrant rosy hues of the wood, its characteristic soft material impact, which the absence of true ceilings makes even more fascinating and evocative.
The building's aesthetic fascination is also a result of the modular textures of the continuous, regular chiaroscuro effect of the wooden boards and the gaps between them, which draw a horizontal score contradicted on the inside by the height of the dividing walls.
On the outside, though, the rigorous jutting lines of the metal elements which partially cover the pavilion underline the presence of the accesses, conceived as vertical slits running the full height of the building in an obvious homage to Wright.
The few covered spaces are lit by lines of great formal purity, for the light fixtures are rows of simple cortén tubes handing from the ceiling.
The result is a harmonious, balanced architecture in which the theme of stacked wood is a continual reminder of the building's ephemeral vocation.
There is a conceptual reference to Le Corbusier's architecture, to his concept of a space which is both functional and aesthetic, along the lines of an architecture "of silence, which speaks without shouting, without big gestures... because the things that last are the things which best fulfil their mission. This is the root of the need not to disturb, of the pleasure of silent forms, of their simple existence, until they become, I hope, an integral part of the essence of a place."
Elena Franzoia
PETER ZUMTHOR
Susswinkel, 20
7023 Haldenstein (CH)
tel. 0041.81.3549292
fax 0041.81.3549293
Links:
www.geocities.com
www.archinform.de/arch/426.htm
www.vitruvio.ch
www.archinfo.it
