"The beginning was easy. Going back in time bathing as one might have a thousand years ago
creating a building a structure set into the slope with an architectural attitude and aura
older than anything already built around it inventing a building that could somehow always
have been there a building that relates to the topography and geology of the location that
responds to the stone masses of Vals Valley pressed faulted folded and sometimes broken into
thousands of plates-these were the objectives of our design." Peter Zumthor Born in 1943
famed architect Peter Zumthor studied at the College of Applied Arts in Basel and the Pratt
Institute in New York. In 2009 he was awarded the Pritzker Architecture Prize for his life's
work which includes the Kunsthaus Bregenz Austria and Kolumba Art Museum in Cologne
Germany. His Therme Vals the spa complex built into a Swiss Alp mountainside became an icon
of contemporary architecture soon after its opening in 1996. Peter Zumthor Therme Vals the
only book-length study of the mountain spa features the architect's own original sketches and
plans for its design as well as Hélène Binet's striking photographs of the structure.
Annotations by Zumthor elucidate Therme Vals's symbiotic relationship to its natural
surroundings and an essay on such topics as Artemis Diana Baptism and Spring by
architectural scholar Sigrid Hauser draw out the connections between the elemental nature of
the spa and mythology bathing and purity. This lavishly illustrated volume about the spa that
catapulted a remote Swiss village onto the international architecture scene will entrance all
enthusiasts of contemporary design.
