October 12, 2020 Issue

Pick of the Issue this week is Dana Goodyear’s absorbing “From the Ground Up,” a profile of Swiss architect Peter Zumthor. The tagline of the piece asks a question: “Will an L.A. project be Peter Zumthor’s masterpiece or a fiasco?” After reading the article, I’d have to say it could go either way. But fiasco is definitely a possibility. The project in question is the new Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Zumthor proposes to build “an elevated, single-story structure loosely shaped like a Matisse cutout.” The problem is that Zumthor appears not to like the site. Goodyear writes,

Zumthor is known to conduct exhaustive research into the conditions and customs of places where he builds. During the mine project, in Norway, he worked for years with local historians. But the emotional approach to learning permits a person to dwell only on what truly interests him. In the late eighties, Zumthor lived for a few months in Los Angeles and taught at SCI-Arc, an experimental architecture school. He went to all the Schindler buildings, learned to manage freeway interchanges, and explored the San Fernando Valley. But he seemed to view the place from a distance, and with some dislike. 

This doesn’t bode well for an architect who Goodyear describes as “an emotional, intuitive designer,” whose “earliest experiences remain his strongest aesthetic guides.” Zumthor doesn’t appear to be emotionally, intuitively connected to the LACMA building site, an intensely urban environment spanning Wilshire Boulevard. His masterpiece, the spa at Therme Vals, in the Swiss Alps, is “regarded as an exalted expression of regional modernism: site-specific, culturally grounded, made from local materials using traditional techniques.” Goodyear describes it beautifully:

The walls are made from elongated quartzite bricks, with gray-scale variations reminiscent of the larchwood slats of his atelier. Open seams in the ceiling allow sunlight to enter in ghostly lines—some defining an alternative volume within the space, others fanning out like an annunciation. A brass spout funnels water from the source, St. Petersquelle, into a brass basin with cups attached by chains. In one secluded pool, swimming around a corner reveals a chamber where the human voice harmonizes with the room so that humming creates a glorious Gregorian echo. 

Goodyear is a superb describer. Her depiction of Zumthor crossing Wilshire, “eating a green apple, his black shirt billowing behind him like a windsock,” is one of my favourite lines in the piece.