Binding: Hardcover
EAN: 9783764361013
ISBN: 3764361018
Label: Princeton Architectural Press
Manufacturer: Princeton Architectural Press
Number Of Pages: 64
Publication Date: 2000-08-01
Publisher: Princeton Architectural Press
Studio: Princeton Architectural Press

The creative act in which a work of architecture comes into being is beyond all historical and technical knowledge. Its focus is on the dialogue with the issues of the time. At the moment of its creation, architecture is bound to the present in a very special way. It reflects the spirit of its inventor and gives its own answers to the questions of the time through its user-oriented form and appearance, its relationship with other works of architecture, and its association with the place where it stands.

Customer Rating:
Summary: Source of Rationality
Comment: It reflects the knowledge of a big architect that Zumthor is, one thousand words that make you learn a diferent way to look at things and to create a rational way of thinking about architecture.

---

Customer Rating:
Summary: Stop reading reviews and start reading this book.
Comment: Zumthor is incredibly talented... there is quite some difficulty in not only creating simple, beautiful, natural and intentional architecture, but also something even more difficult in relating it verbally. Thinking Architecture does an amazing job at that. This is a book you could return to every few months, and it will re-awaken your senses to the architectural world around you, as well as your memories and experiences with those environments. Zumthor truly does give an excellent source of thoughts and events in this book. Extremely recommended, "Atmospheres" as well!

---

Customer Rating:
Summary: A different way of "thinking architecture"
Comment: As an architecture student, I found this book very very interesting, because Peter Zumthor has a different way of "thinking architecture". His own way. A way in which I had never thought of it, so it actualy opened my mind for some aspects that are not so frequent in the learning of architecture.

---

Customer Rating:
Summary: clear thinker and builder
Comment: Reading this book was like reading a long-lost secret manual of
"How to become a 21 century Samurai..." I guess that sense of delusion rises because the content and the tone of book has this (quasi) idea of medieval perfection achieved through a repetition of hands-on practice. "I do not work towards architecture from a theoretically defined point of departure, for I am committed to making architecture,," writes Zumthor.

Moreover, a reader, at the back of her/his head, has those powerful images of Bath House in Vaals (tour de force of phenomenological experience) that intensifies the delusion. One would think, 'Zumthor must be a man from Mars to build architecture like that' and 'his writings must be a strong sleeping pill.' Usual Suspect !

He writes extremely clear with extremely simple terms. This slim book tells us how an architect of such originality thinks and experiences daily life. It's a great pleasure to find out what kind of music (Mozart's piano concertos) zumthor listens; what kind of artists (Beuys and Merz) he likes; what kind of film he watches (Ettore Scola's film Le Bal); what kind of books (Calvino) he reads; and what kind of sayings ("the hard core beauty") in the radio show captivates him. A former cabinet maker, his book is carefully jointed, just like his buildings. Anyone who found this book fun/inspiring to read should also try Alvaro Siza's "Writings on Architecture"

---

Customer Rating:
Summary: Highly recommended
Comment: A thoroughly engaging book about meaningful architecture - it now holds a very special place in my architecture library, right next to Michael Benedikt's For An Architecture of Reality.
Excellent for anyone interested in Peter Zumthor's work.

---