Peter zumthor

This previously run-down family home has been transformed into a bright dwelling with captivating design features for a young, growing family.   Years of disrepair had left this house in dire need of modernisation.   The house required an extension to support modern living; Loud. Architecture & Interior Design extended to the rear and to the side to meet the neighbour’s extension and angled from the neighbour’s wall back to meet the house in a sympathetic way.   The newly designed house has many design features that include: secret doors, new materials, contemporary kitchen designs and internal windows.   What was the concept? Hackney is a leafy, green borough with a traditionally industrial past... More

Located in the heart of Prospect Heights, one of Brooklyn’s most vibrant, diverse and historic neighborhoods, 280 St. Marks Avenue embraces a way of life that balances a personal point of view and a commitment to community. The distinctive faceted façade echoes the proportions and cadence of classic Brooklyn brownstones, gently referencing the transition of the city grid over time. Bustling Flatbush Turnpike once ran adjacent to the site, and remnants of the old streetscape can be seen in 280's unique property outline. Those angles inform the buildings footprint and define well-proportioned interior and outdoor spaces. The five-story building encompasses 32 residences, nearly all distinguished by a unique floor plan. Each home... More

At the heart of Peter Zumthor’s Pavilion was a garden that the architect hoped would inspire visitors to become observers. Zumthor said his design aimed 'to help its audience take the time to relax, to observe and then, perhaps, start to talk again - maybe not.’ The design emphasised the role the senses and emotions play in our experience of architecture. With a refined selection of materials Zumthor created contemplative spaces that evoked the spiritual dimension of our physical environment. As always, Zumthor’s aesthetic goal was to customise the building precisely to its purpose as a physical body and an object of emotional experience. The 2011 Pavilion was the architect's first completed building in the UK and included a speci... More

Reform and expansion of a house and landscape reformulation, including natural pools reformulation and a new natural pool. Deployings cavenged materials supplementary buildings were created as ediculae including living/dining/playing room, gourmet kitchen, home theater, fitness room, barn, complementary sleeping rooms, some connected to the main house, some spread through the garden.The project integrates architecture with existing landscape, relating to topography, existing stones, native species, minimizing earth moving, resulting in a group of pavillions interpersed by the luxuriant natural Atlantic forest landscape.Natural raw materials like stone and wood were used extensively.Low reflective colors like moss green were deployed in... More

«It has become rare to be able to sit in a house and look out at a beautiful landscape where no trace of another building interrupts the lines of the rolling hills. Quietness, contemplation, pure luxury. I could not resist to try to create this house.» - Peter ZumthorLiving Architecture is delighted to announce the near completion of Secular Retreat, Chivelstone, Devon, designed by Pritzker prize-winning architect Peter Zumthor. It will be the architect’s first permanent building in the UK, and marks the seventh commission in a visionary series of houses designed by leading artists and architects in distinctive, unique sites across England.The house is situated on a South Devon hilltop, one mile from the coast above the small Hamlet of Chiv... More

The clients had fallen in love with the beautiful site on the outskirts of the market town of Morpeth, and so did we; steeply sloping and edged by woodland, it is a wonderful, challenging context with a brief to create a family home sympathetic to the setting whilst embodying the excitement of a woodland hideaway. The building adapts to the sites contours, with arrival separated from private south facing kitchen-terrace, and the garden to the north exploiting the only flat section of the site. There is an intentionally rich palette of materials; like a Bewick woodcut or the woodland texture around it, the building is made of different grains and surfaces; natural but under precise control with slate shingle cladding to the lower secti... More

On Thursday, May 4, 2017, the Swiss architect Peter Zumthor is presenting the project for the extension to the Fondation Beyeler in Riehen/Basel. The extension will be constructed on the previously private land of the Iselin-Weber Park, which adjoins the Fondation Beyeler. A new public park will thus be created in the heart of Riehen. The Fondation Beyeler will thereby create a group of museum buildings that satisfies the needs of a visitor-friendly museum. The size of the parks will be doubled. In the 21st century, a museum is a place for human beings and no longer just for objects. It is a social space in which visitors can have experiences on their own or together with others. People come to a museum for education, entertainment, rec... More

Leis is a remote and authentic swiss mountain village, it consists of about a dozen old houses and stables. Peter Zumthor had already built two new houses in the neighbourhood. For the remaining lots a masterplan was made which defined volumetric settings and facade materials in order to guarantee a minimum of architectural quality for the development of the village. Two new houses were to be planned for clients with different backgrounds and needs. The aim was to make the houses appear as a pair, despite their differences in programm and dimension. Together with the existing stables they form a space that connects them with the village. Both buildings share the same organisation in section: Main entrance and technical spaces in the b... More

Annalisa had always dreamed of living in a house built of wood. Whenever she talked to me about it, I had the impression of a cosy home in the mountains where she would live alone. The two of us as a couple or a family with children never came up in all the different versions that she described during the many years that we lived together. It was obvious that she was describing a very personal feeling of home and hominess. She envisioned rooms out of wood and painted in various colours. Was she talking about the way Swiss mountain pine smells, about a crackling fire in the living room stove, about the special warmth of wood as a shell for the human body, the way she did recently? I don't recall exactly what she said but I still have the imp... More

The headquarters of the West German Radio (WDR) mediagroup is prominently located in the city center of Cologne, not far from the Cathedral. The post-modern administrative building was already showing its age and has not only struggled with the physical fragility of its construction. Moreover, strived to maintain its representation in a high-quality architectural neighborhood. One of the immediate neighboring building is the Diocesan Museum established by Peter Zumthor of the Archbishopric Kolumba. Against this background the planners of SSP AG developed a refurbishment concept in the framework of a feasibility study, which in addition to optimizing the floor space and operations, also focuses on recreating the visual representation of t... More

The MVRDV project is built on a beautiful site by a small lake in the English countryside near Thorington in Suffolk. From the road, the barn is almost invisible; the front being only 7 metres wide, with a pitched roof, faces the long straight driveway approach, suggesting a small house with a traditional shape. The volume, however, has a length of 30 metres. At the midpoint it starts to cantilever over the descending slope; a balancing act made possible by the rigid structure of the building; resulting in 50% of the barn being in free space, and giving a wide view over the Suffolk landscape, adjacent lake and surrounding gardens. The long sides of the structure are well hidden by trees allowing privacy inside and around the barn. The exter... More

This project is the result of some unconsciousness mixed with a lot of admiration. The unconsciousness came from the side of the clients, Neus and Kenji of Can Kenji team, commissioning his new Japanese restaurant "izakaya" to a team that had never designed a restaurant and not even been in Japan. The admiration is ours to a culture as unknown as admired. Which one is our Japan? The one of the videogames and the lights of Tokio, the Japan of Frank Lloyd Wright, in the mood for love, their admired tradition of periodically rebuilt some temples to preserve the touch and smell for its sensorial perception, the House of Sugimoto and of course In Praise with Shadows of Tanizaki. All of that, without any order or ambition, joint to a healthy ob... More

“I resolved that the structural and technical dimensions of design must never divorce human life from nature”. - Nature Near, the late essays of Richard Neutra. ( Capra press,1989), Richard Neutra. Edited by William Marlin. As soon as Julia Peyton-Jones and Hans Ulrich Obrist mentioned us the possibility to design the Serpentine Pavilion, we began to think about the main features that the structure needed to provide and the material that had to define it. Starting with something simple – that this Pavilion was to be built in a Royal Park in London – we asked: what are the local materials that represent London? Which material should be used in a Royal Park? Almost straight away, using this situation and mixing it with more personal inter... More