Anima Cubiculi: Peter Zumthor and the Spirit of a Room

a gestalt

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The transition from January to February always feels a little sad for me here in Northwest Georgia: we exchange the crisp cold of the former for the sloshy muck of the latter. The ice and snow go away and, as they exit, they leave big puddles of mud in their wake. Our ducks love it, but I don’t. Even when the weather is nice outside, if the ground is mush, I tend to stay in.

However, being inside more often forces me to appreciate my house more, and to pay attention to things I tend to walk past thoughtlessly every day. There are the frustrating things, like how the back door won’t quite close right, or how some of the shelves are not quite level; there are also the delightful things, like the picture window in the living room, and the wood-paneled walls upstairs. In those moments of attention, I can’t help but also remember all of the homes I have lived in, visited, and loved.

During these indoor reveries, I think a lot about the Swiss architect Peter Zumthor. My brother-in-law, a professor of architecture, drew my attention to Zumthor a few years ago, when my interest in the field was just burgeoning (thank you again, Scott). Around the same time, I was having recurring dreams about my grandparents’ home in Florida, a home that I grew up visiting, and which they moved out of when I was in high school. A lost country of the mind.

I started reading Zumthor and found myself enchanted by the way he spoke about houses. The idea that we are proficient (perhaps even most proficient) at experiencing architecture when we are doing it subconsciously piqued my interest. My recurring dreams featured nothing more than walking through my grandparents’ old house, looking at rooms and objects, touching walls and door knobs, moving slowly. That process of recollection seems similar to what Zumthor had in mind when he wrote his masterpiece Thinking Architecture. For him, the generative space was his aunt’s kitchen. For me, it was the little bedrooms in the back of my grandparents’ house.