Monuments of architecture and creators of the transcendence: Peter Zumthor (part 2)

 (Renzo Piano structures to be demolished by Zumthor for the LACMA project)

 (The proposed LA firm Morphosis project to over shadow Zumthor's Theme Vals spas.)

(All images from the public domain.)

With the living embodiment of Architects attempting to transcend time with their designed structures, Peter Zumthor, although set between the two opposing sides, one hand rapid pace development within a credit boom world and on the other sustainability.  He clearly praises the latter, that is the longevity of design.  Yet, the balance or the middle ground for an architect as the humble and more so creative expression that Zumthor has, also comes at a price. In its exclusivity of buildings and their creation, to which makes good architecture, there is the prefabrication of its fast tracked development which encroaches almost like a curse.  And this curse, beyond its creation of money is greed.  So, despite the humility of Zumthor and his fixed concepts of design – the tendering of projects he has sourced, has occurred via the financiering of buildings, it is the only way they can be built.  So how does a modern day architect, maintain his or her principles of design to ensure that these monuments are to outlive man?  While not seeing this as an egotistical desire, but as a statement to what we know are the ruins of history, to pay homage to its time line.  Is innovation.  As seen with his protective tomb like brick and concrete rendering over  the old St Christopher church now the  Klombia Museum in Cologne, viewed as a point of expression to protect an historic man-made object.  In turn what galvanizes our fascination, is that reinvigorating human willpower of enduring sentiment to see the past – as the remnants of an intelligent life, rare in the cosmos, to which was able to create, design and built to defy not just nature, but also their own human folly.

This has been missed on a broad scale as we further move into the 21st Century replaced by development and greed.  Not an uncommon aspect that is a definitive flaw within our psychology, yet, in a global trade world of e-commerce, with corruption widespread.  The greed induced idealism of maintaining forecasts, to further influence the credit markets, was engineered to attain these finances to build structures at an astounding rate.  This betise of greed even encroaches on an architect like Peter Zumthor and if you look at his beautifully constructed Theme Vals spas, situated in the mountain hamlet of Leis in Val untouched for twenty years.  We see a transverse of contradiction, now after he recently lost a battle with a developer, who has on-sold the project to a architectural firm based in Los Angeles, the construction plans of a high rise hotel/apartment building along side Theme Vals within the picturesque hamlet.  At the outrage of Zumthor and the locals, who viewed the famous spa as a social enterprise, is now being commercialized for a broader appeal – all for the international tourist.  Which is where the credit markets and developers are probably over betting to manipulate future forecasts, but for now, the play is Chinese money.  Yet at the same time, this is the leverage the Chinese government needs in maintaining its position and power in the world, by encouraging thousands and thousands of tourists to descend on European and American landmarks every year to spend – in turn the corruption of fast track development in the West reaches a feverish intensity.  

To be balanced no one is really to blame sans the universal imprint of human greed. And it runs from all angles. There is a tragedy in all of this, even extending back to Zumthor who won a tender in 2013 to redevelop the Los Angeles County Museum of Art Tar Pits, also invoking controversy on its development.   With Zumthor flipflopping between redesigning the behemoth structure on countless occasions to appease critics - but it is the demolition of Renzo Piano structures as well as three William Pereira buildings from 1965, that has brewed a contradiction within the famed architecture.  There is a prudence with virtue  and humility, that time will always erode.  And ego is all but a vapor.  We shouldn't look for heros.

The Chinese in their mythology, particularly the Chinese Buddhism, believe in the Hungry Ghosts half dead entities, never satisfied, through either greed of desire.  Maybe we have all become Hungry Ghosts, on a quest to become superstars, wealthy, influential. Confused through the digital world.  If the ruins of the past are also, apart from weathering the harshness of nature, to remind us of impermanence.  What is being built today of glass and steel, the rubric and glamor of prefabrication, maybe already be dead.