Facing Building Facade's Growing Complexity: The Work of Peter Zumthor

New Complexity The facade has become a very complex system with many functions. It has to enclose space, offer thermal insulation, control solar gains, control water vapor transfers and ensure airtightness. Challenged Values These new functions imply different layers impacting the building specifically. This reality challenges traditional values such as truth in the expression of the material or the expression of structure. The debate opposing Semper and Viollet-Le-Duc in the nineteenth century is relevant to understanding the present-day situation. Two Answers The first answer consists in embracing this new complexity by offering an explicit place to these multiple layers, thus creating a new set of values and a new expression. The second approach consists in trying to maintain the image that resulted from these traditional values by internalizing complexity, thus offering a very minimalistic and pure appearance. Outer Complexity In his first works, Zumthor uses these different layers in some kind of musically coordinated orders: The order of the structure, the order of the wall, the order of the skin, the order of the technical systems. The chapel Sogn Benedetg illustrates this perfectly. By splitting the layers and embracing this reality, his work advocates the expression of the structure and from materials being true to themselves. Inner Complexity In his latest works, Zumthor seeks a more minimalistic expression related to an idea of space. He tends to absorb these layers in massive structures made of one single material. His second office near Chur illustrates this approach. Paradoxically, by trying to reach simplicity, he internalizes the complexity and blurs the roles of the different terms of his architecture.