by Conrad Newel

Deception and paradox is the touchstone of Peter Zumthor’s branding strategy. By that I mean that he blatantly goes around promoting himself as a reclusive non-promoter. He goes on television, radio, interviews, films, etc only to then say that he does not believe in promoting himself. Its like a commercial advertisement saying “look at our product, it is so good we don’t have to advertise it” ?.

?I had written an article about this exact same thing some years ago (you can read it here), then at the Venice Biennale I was confronted by it again via the Wim Wenders film about Zumthor “NOTES FROM A DAY IN THE LIFE OF AN ARCHITECT”. There it was again,  plain as day staring me in the face: Yet another blatant self promoting stunt, this time in the form of a film, placed in the middle of the Venice Biennale (the biggest, most eventful architectural spectacle in the world) targeted to a specific architecturally interested group. What is the main argument of the film you ask?: 

"Peter Zumthor [is] an architect not driven by the need to make a name for himself ".

For a guy who is not driven by image making or doesn't believe in self promotion, this is an awfully promotional thing to do. You simply can not get more promotional than that.

What’s interesting is that this is a film not so much about Zumthor’s work, but more about Zumthor the man himself. He is presented as this great master architect: a made to order genius who has all the answers figured out; a deity ready to be worshiped. I was expecting the film to end with the narrator urging the audience to take a "pilgrimage" to his studio at least once in their lifetimes and lay at his feet and absorb his infinite wisdom.  

Without any critical perspective, the film turns 5 minutes into one long masturbatory monologue of lustful admiration. It just showers a lot of praise on him personally, not so much his office or the people working for him (though they were mentioned and shown peripherally) but on him, his traits, his personal habits, his hands, his feet, his unstyled style white beard, his purposefully unkempt eyebrows, his black plastic framed glasses, etc.

More correctly this is Zumthor porn. 

It had nothing whatsoever to do with the theme of the Biennale: Common ground.

This was just a downright blatant self promotional stunt. In the context of the biennale, it felt like  an outright infomercial. 

The film starts off with the master making a cup of coffee, in his kitchen as Wim Wender’s narrator voice gently chimes in:
 

...He is a man who is very adamant about his morning coffee. 

We were able to spend a couple of days with him in his atelier and get a look at two of the projects Peter Zumthor was working on right now with his team of mostly young architects. I was most impressed by the sense of place in the buildings of his that I have seen so far and in the sites that I have visited in the past: museums, public structures, chapels, private houses. ?But meeting Peter Zumthor here in the apartment and office space he had built for himself and watching him work, I was even more impressed... 

Below are some screenshots from the film:

Here is the great master making coffee barefooted. If you are a seasoned publicist such as the ones working on political campaigns styling the candidate for the right look to convey the right message, then you will know that showing barefoot in such a context is meant to soften the image and show him as a man connected to the ground, in touch with the earth, a sensitivity for the materials and the architectural surfaces around him. This was no accident. Though I have no doubt that this is how he normally goes about his studio, showing him like this adds to the theatrics and reinforces the image of him as the materially sensitive reclusive: That is the Zumthor brand.   

This is how Peter Zumthor drinks his morning coffee  

This is Peter Zumthor after drinking his coffee  

Here is a shot of Peter Zumthor's masterful hands as they draw 

And this one...this is the money shot right here: the centerfold spread. As Peter reclines in his Le Corbusier chair with one leg over the armrest, the narrator's voice gently says:  

I was even more impressed by his sense of time, how much he is at ease and relaxed, cool, calm and collective, well spoken and most of all how he refuses to be rushed: He lets his projects ripen and mature like good wines so that they reveal themselves more and more to him and his team. So then he keeps mulling on the goodness he wants to do so that he can actually improve on them layer after layer, until he feels that they can't be built better. Only then he goes ahead: A procedure that would be considered an outrageous luxury not only in my own profession... 

Besides the sexual overtones, the suggestion here is that Zumthor is never stressed out about deadlines, client pressure, etc. He does the project fully on his terms. A man at ease with himself and the world: a Don among architects if you will. 

This kind of reminds me of someone I know:

 "I am a passionate architect, I don't always work for money, but when I do, I prefer Deception and Paradox." ..."Stay foolish, my friends."

When you have a statement like the following (this is the parting words of the film):

Peter Zumthor an architect not driven by the need to make a name for himself or constructing as much as possible, but driven by the urgent desire to improve his buildings so that the lives of those people using them or living in them will become better 

It implies that he is an exception to the norm, that most other architects are overly driven by making a name for themselves, that we just want to build as much as possible, that the majority of us are not interested in improving the lives of our clients through our work. But Peter Zumthor is one of the rear bread that does care and have integrity.

This just does not hold water. 

I have traveled around the world and I have met architects from all corners of the planet and in my experience, as a group, architects are by and large very decent people that come with a lot of integrity and passion for what they do. I have yet to come across an architect who really does not give a shit about his/her clients. Even the dirtiest scums at the bottom of the profession who take advantage of interns, etc, generally tend to want to make their clients satisfied.

It is the first principle of being in and staying in business.  

Making a name for ourselves?

...OK, guilty as charged. 

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