Serpentine Gallery Pavilion 2011
Serpentine Gallery Pavilion 2011
Designed by Peter Zumthor
© Peter Zumthor
Photograph: John Offenbach
Quest’anno l’architetto Svizzero Peter Zumthor per l’installazione all’esterno della galleria d’arte.
Per l’11° anno consecutivo nei Kensington Gardens, (LND) la Serpentine Gallery commissiona (anche se in realtà questo fatto è universalmente riconosciuto come l’assegnazione di un premio) ad un architetto di caratura mondiale il padiglione esterno: quest’anno la tematica proposta daldirettivo è stata quella dell hortus conclusus un area giardino chiuso e separato dal resto del parco.
Peter Zumthor architetto svizzero di fama mondiale (Pritzker Prize 2009, menzione d’onore all’ultima Biennale di Archittetura di Venezia), celebre per le sue architetture introspettive, e dalle grandi capacità nell’uso di materiali e di superfici piene, è stato l’artista ideatore del padiglione diquest’anno: la sua grande sensibilità nella definizione di spazi da dedicare alla riflessione, e a luoghi contemplativi (come ben espresso nell’edificio dei Bagni Termali a Vals (CH) o nella Cappella di Bruder Klaus – Mechernich (D), che potessero isolare la città caotica all’esterno, e conservare calma e tranquillità nel intimo del giardino, erano la figura ideale per l’assegnazione di questo lavoro/premio.
Lui a proposito della sua opera:
“A garden is the most intimate landscape ensemble I know of. It is close to us. There wecultivate the plants we need. A garden requires care and protection. And so we encircle it,we defend it and fend for it. We give it shelter. The garden turns into a place.Enclosed gardens fascinate me. A forerunner of this fascination is my love of the fenced vegetable gardens on farms in the Alps, where farmers’ wives often planted flowers aswell. I love the image of these small rectangles cut out of vast alpine meadows, the fence keeping the animals out. There is something else that strikes me in this image of a garden fenced off within the larger landscape around it: something small has found sanctuarywithin something big.
(Wk:) L’hortus conclusus latino, è la forma tipica di giardino medievale, legato soprattutto amonasteri e conventi. Zona verde, generalmente di piccole dimensioni e circondata da alte mura,dove i monaci coltivavano essenzialmente piante e alberi per scopi alimentari e medicinali. Senza alcuna funzione decorativa.
Alessandro Morellato per Feel Desain
Serpentine Gallery Pavilion 2011
Designed by Peter Zumthor
© Peter Zumthor
Photograph: John Offenbach
Serpentine Gallery Pavilion 2011
Designed by Peter Zumthor
© Peter Zumthor
Photograph: Walter Herfst
Serpentine Gallery Pavilion 2011
Designed by Peter Zumthor
© Peter Zumthor
Photograph: John Offenbach
Serpentine Gallery Pavilion 2011
Designed by Peter Zumthor
© Peter Zumthor
Photograph: John Offenbach
Serpentine Gallery Pavilion 2011
Designed by Peter Zumthor
© Peter Zumthor
Photograph: Walter Herfst
Serpentine Gallery Pavilion 2011
Designed by Peter Zumthor
© Peter Zumthor
Photograph: Walter Herfst
Other Peter Zumthor Project
Built over the only thermal springs in the Graubunden Canton in Switzerland, The Therme Vals is a hotel and spa in one which combines a complete sensory experience designed by Peter Zumthor.
Peter Zumthor designed the spa/baths which opened in 1996 to pre date the existing hotel complex. The idea was to create a form of cave or quarry like structure. Working with the natural surroundings the bath rooms lay below a grass roof structure half buried into the hillside. The Therme Vals is built from layer upon layer of locally quarried Valser Quarzite slabs. This stone became the driving inspiration for the design, and is used with great dignity and respect.
“Mountain, stone, water – building in the stone, building with the stone, into the mountain, building out of the mountain, being inside the mountain – how can the implications and the sensuality of the association of these words be interpreted, architecturally?” Peter Zumthor
This space was designed for visitors to luxuriate and rediscover the ancient benefits of bathing. The combinations of light and shade, open and enclosed spaces and linear elements make for a highly sensuous and restorative experience. The underlying informal layout of the internal space is a carefully modelled path of circulation which leads bathers to certain predetermined points but lets them explore other areas for themselves. The perspective is always controlled. It either ensures or denies a view.
“The meander, as we call it, is a designed negative space between the blocks, a space that connects everything as it flows throughout the entire building, creating a peacefully pulsating rhythm. Moving around this space means making discoveries. You are walking as if in the woods. Everyone there is looking for a path of their own.” Peter Zumthor
The fascination for the mystic qualities of a world of stone within the mountain, for darkness and light, for light reflections on the water or in the steam saturated air, pleasure in the unique acoustics of the bubbling water in a world of stone, a feeling of warm stones and naked skin, the ritual of bathing – these notions guided the architect. Their intention to work with these elements, to implement them consciously and to lend them to a special form was there from the outset. The stone rooms were designed not to compete with the body, but to flatter the human form (young or old) and give it space…room in which to be.
Architects: Peter Zumthor, with Marc Loeliger, Thomas Durisch and Rainer Weitschies
Location: Graubunden Canton, Switzerland
Project completed: 1996
