-By Kate Goodwin

"There are no ideas except in things"—Peter Zumthor, Thinking Architecture

As I descend the broad generous staircase of the American Academy in Rome, where Peter Zumthor is architect in residence for three months, I realize that the two-hour conversation with him has changed the way I look at the world. I am acutely aware of how the afternoon light softly fills the volume, bathing the white walls with a serene glow. I feel and hear the stone stairs beneath me; I am aware of my body's movement down the slightly modest treads, of the timing of another alongside me, of the blueness of the sky visible out the high window. He makes you see the qualities of architecture and the atmosphere it creates.

Terms such as "outsider" and "hermit" are to Peter Zumthor misleading labels, placed upon him by the international press fueling a legend of "a monk in the alps." His objection, quite rightly, is that these labels suggest he is working in isolation, removed from the everyday world. He sees nothing mythical about his existence or his home and studio in Haldenstein, a beautiful small town in the Swiss mountains. By his own admission, his working process in his studio, or "small shop of 18 people," is closed and concentrated, enabling a response that is deeply rooted in place and being. He draws inspiration from music, literature, philosophy, and a perceptive observation of the world; he has never been concerned with abstract architectural theory. When he studied architecture at Pratt Institute in New York in the 1960s, he found: "School was boring. It was not happening there—it was happening in the streets." He has always responded to the tangible in architecture, starting his career working on the preservation of old buildings, dealing with connectivity to the past and to the ground.

Zumthor is a craftsman who creates a whole architectural composition, marrying function, construction, history, and aesthetics, evoking memory and creating an experience. He embraces his projects in totality, going through a rigorous process of critiquing and refining what it is and what it needs to do, be, and evoke, before even picking up a pencil. "You can reach the quality I am interested in reaching only in this way, with this sort of close concentration, which starts in the programming phase," he says. "This is controlled to the end, like a painter who paints a picture or a composer who puts together a piece of music." He sees the majority of architecture today as simply a veneer "about the surface and the image. I am about the content, about the whole thing," he says, acknowledging that he is not the only architect with such concerns, and believes this approach will have a popular resurgence.

Uniquely for an architect, Zumthor rarely speaks of completed buildings in lectures, and when interviewed, his answers constantly relate to the buildings he is working on. His words paint vivid pictures, describing the location, history, tradition, program, and how he is thinking of weaving together the architectural elements, moving one through the intimate spaces and creating an understanding of what he is doing, what he hopes to evoke. "Black sail cloth is hung so it will make a noise, so the windows will shake," he says. One understands very quickly that his mind is completely occupied with these buildings and that he invests his soul. However, it is not something that he gives away lightly. The project, client, and conditions must be exactly right, and he will walk away if he feels the situation is compromised. "This is because I don't want to be a toy," he explains. "This is because for me it is always flesh and blood and heart. I don't want to find myself in the situation of just being bought."

To have the ability to control a project and to create the building he wants, he has even taken a commission for free, releasing himself from the normal client/architect burdens. He believes it takes a client who is innovative, who can acknowledge that quality can create profit—conditions that should also be possible in the commercial world. His relationship with his clients is intense: "I put the stakes up very high," he notes. "They must prove to me that they really want it." "They" become completely engaged with the buildings and the process, enhanced by his generosity in sharing his ideas from the first instance.

His books Thinking Architecture and Atmospheres are crafted with exquisite care and show the same generosity of ideas. They are less than 100 pages, double-spaced, with whole pages given to a single framed image. His writing is highly personal and individual while capturing something universal, a characteristic that underlies his buildings. Atmospheres questions what we mean when we talk about architectural quality, setting out his concerns in nine chapters that explain how he goes about creating an atmosphere. Thinking Architecture contains eight essays extracted from lectures he has given between 1988 and 2004, illustrating a consistency of thought and relevance to his current designs. As he says, his ideas have not changed with fashions or trends but have matured, and he has gained more confidence in his intuitive responses. While not being about a trend, his buildings are still of our time with reference to the past and suggestion of a future. They are about the making of architecture and the creation of places in which we exist. They have a quality that is exceptional and engender a response that is difficult to articulate. Spend time with his books, but visit his buildings, as there is no substitute. The world will look different.

Kate Goodwin is the curator of the architecture program at the Royal Academy of Arts in London since 2003. She has expanded the scope of the program into a high profile part of the activities of Britain's oldest arts institution, broadening the discourse on architecture to encompass exhibitions, debates, lectures, film-screenings, and performances. She has been involved in university crit panels and written for various publications including Blueprint and WAN. She completed her degree in architecture at the University of Sydney.