THERME VALS

GRAUBUDEN,

SWITZERLAND

1999

(Vals Thermal Baths - Arcspace.Com, n.d.)      

Architect:

Peter Zumthor born in 1943 in Basel, Switzerland is a Swiss architect who was brought up in a family of carpenters. From an early age Zumthor helped his father in his studio with the press making which he says ‘sparked his interest for design early in his life’. Zumthor

graduated from the Kunstgewerbeschule in Basel, Switzerland, in 1963 and in 1966 continued his studies at the Pratt Institute in New York City as an architect. After returning to Switzerland in 1979 he established a practice in Haldenstein called ‘Peter Zumthor & Partner’, where he then met his wife and had three children.(Peter Zumthor | Swiss Architect | Britannica, n.d.) Zumthor’s practice is a small one with only thirty architects working together, as Zumthor always wanted to keep his practice small so he could work privately on the projects without too many people influencing and interrupting him. Throughout his life Zumthor has taught at University of Southern California Institute of Architecture and SCI-ARC in Los Angeles in 1988, the Technical University of Munich in 1989, Tulane University in 1992,the Harvard Graduate School of Design in 1999 and since 1996, he has been a professor at the Accademia di Architettura di Mendrisio. He is well known for his pure, austere structures, which have been described as timeless and poetic as well as uncompromising and minimalist. Having his own unique design aesthetic that merges the architecture with the natural environment; his designs won him the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 2009. Most of his work consists of natural light dramatically filling the space; Zumthor uses light almost as a media to create his own art yet still his concern is with context, experience, and materiality, not the aesthetic, thanks to this the The Daylight Award by VELUX Stiftung in 2010 has been awarded to him.(Peter Zumthor | The Life & Architectural Career — Archisoup | Architecture Guides & Resources, n.d.) Returning to his roots all of Zumthor’s architecture has the qualities a great cabinetmaker: it is precise, and its glory lies in the perfection of its details and in the excellence of its materials. Thanks to this Zumthor’s daylight design is one of great quality and can only truly be experienced in person and therefore he rarely courts media publicity for his projects as he truly believes it would murder the initial experience of being in one of his buildings.

 (Therme Vals – Plan, n.d.)

 (Jabez Ho ARCH 1201: Inspirations from Existing Architecture, n.d.)

Client:

In the 1960s a German property developer, Karl Kurt Vorlop, built a hotel complex in the area with over 1,000 beds to take advantage of the naturally occurring thermal springs. Few years later once he went bankrupt the village of Vals bought the five hotels in development in 1983 and commissioned a hydrotherapy centre at the middle of the five hotels on the source of the thermal springs designed by Zumthor himself. ( Thermas Vals - Data, Photos & Plans - WikiArquitectura, n.d.) The spa facility became exceptionally popular and turned into a hotel under the name ‘7132 Therme & Hotel’ after an investor Remo Stoffel purchased the site for 7.8 million.

Location:

The Baths are situated in Vals, Canton Graubunden in Switzerland. Vals is in fact a village in the Surselva Region in the canton of Graubünden; it is the last place in that particular valley, below there are only mountains and sky. On the other side of the valley is Ticino as well as the lush alpine meadows, rugged rock formations, viaducts, and the quarry. (Thermas Vals - Data, Photos & Plans - WikiArquitectura, n.d.) Zumthor took great influence from the area for his design; most notably the structure of the building in the form of cave or quarry to imitate the nearby surroundings. The bathhouse is located directly below a grass roof, a structure half buried in the hillside; which was a clever idea in order to merge the building with the landscape.

Critique:

The thermal bathhouse in Vels is to be considered as piece of art sculpted into the landscape; Some surfaces are polished; others are roughly hewn, highlighting the natural colour and depth of the locally quarried granite. The natural tones of grey and black combined create a false illusion one enters a cave rather than a spa resort; it is calming and peaceful yet simultaneously much powerful due to the size of the space. The bathhouse as seen in the images is almost like a lego block construction having different blocks of granite stocked on top of each other reveal small orthogonal rooms, might be thought of as having been carved from the mountain. The façade of the building fits so perfectly with the landscape that it almost seems as if the building was Zumthor framing a piece of landscape with windows.(A Place to Leave Time in Suspension. The Thermal Baths in Vals by Peter Zumthor | The Strength of Architecture | From 1998, n.d.)  The light in these spaces is carefully controlled by Zomthor as if he hung ‘strings of light’ from the ceiling. This structure is ‘a world of stone and water, of darkness and light.’ (Reuber P. Therme Vals. The Canadian Architect 2002 06;47(6):25.)

It would be difficult to notice the building from above as it naturally blends in with the environment around it thanks to the choice of materials for the façade. The hillside meadow slopes down to spread horizontally out onto a terrace which can be seen as a carpet of blue flowers. Within this carpet are placed fissures of translucent glass and a square bed of downlighters that in a sensible manner illuminate the spaces below so that a person can safely move through without the effect of a cave being dissolved. In comparison with the view above, looking from the road below, the building appears as an embankment, a monolith of compressed stone with large ocular openings. These openings play more than one role; apart from having the function of movement through the bathhouse they also allow daylight to enter, the amount of daylight coming into the building depends from the time of the day. Similarly as to the Chichu Art Museum, the daylight in this building does not evenly illuminate the spaces; it is much more restrained and only accessed is specific parts. There is an explicit balance between shadow and light within the structure; many writers state that it is an extremely sensuous experience, veiling reflections or excessive brightness does not exist as Zamthor filled the spaces with darkness before he added any daylight. (The Slow Architecture of Peter Zumthor’s Thermal Baths, n.d.)

While directing oneself through the shadowy corridors from the hotel to the spa resort you may be blessed with linear gaps in the roof above that admit bright strips of daylight allowing enough light into the eye to move around comfortably.(Thermal Baths in Vals, Switzerland by Peter Zumthor - Architectural Review, n.d.) The slim gaps are indeed filled in with glass for thermal comfort and protection. When looking more closely Zumthor put in a lot of thought into the materials he used; the water reflecting daylight onto the granite creates a form of art that can only be truly appreciated in person. As when reflecting on the inside the mahogany and copper pieces complete each other together with the granite walls in order to keep the atmosphere very relaxed and dark, almost like in a church where a person is meant to feel safe and at ease exactly like in a spa resort. Keeping the voids and windows in large scale and rectangular with sharp edges that allow much daylight in give the place a minimalistic and clean finish almost reflecting on the purpose of the building.