How has Peter Zumthor responded to all of the Senses in his building The Therme Vals?

Name: Helin Ozcan

Student Number: 1423670

Blog Link: http://www.blogs.wecreatetogether.net/helinozcan/category/16-17tyaaart002-3-

key-ideas-in-art-and-design-current-debates/
 Contents Page

Introduction 3

The Five Senses in Architecture 4, 5, 6

The Therme Vals: Design 6, 7, 8

The Therme Vals: Senses 8, 9

Conclusion 10

Illustrations 11

Bibliography 12, 13

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Introduction

‘’Architecture is not about form, it is about many other things. The Light and the use, and
the structure, and the shadow, the smell and so on. I think form is the easiest to control, it
can be done at the end.’’
(Peter Zumthor, Royal Gold Medal Lecture at the RIBA London, Amy Frearson, 6 February
2013) I agree with this because it should be more valuable, to get people’s senses to spark
while they travel in a space, like the material can make people’s touch, sound, sight senses
to awaken which then will enable them to express the space sensually, making it more
meaningful than its form.

This essay will analyse how Peter Zumthor has applied each of the senses which consist of
Sound, Sight, Touch, Smell, Taste in his architecture The Therme Vals. It will discuss how
Zumthor has brought all of these senses together, in this one space to create a full sensory
experience for the people. He has also brought daylight into the building which It will also
analyse what the importance of this was, the reason why, and the effect it creates in the
building that links with the senses. ‘’Instead of mere vision, or the five classical senses,
architecture involves several realms of sensory experience which interact and fuse into each
other.’’ (Pallasmaa, The Eyes of the Skin Architecture and the Senses, pg 45) From this
quote I can see that all the senses are actually united together, they spark one another and
it is possible for it to come together in one space. The senses are a part of our lives, we can
not feel, make memories, hear sound, and many more things it can awaken, without them.
In architecture, architects can control people’s senses in their buildings. There are a few
architects who actually give importance to the senses and actually design considering it as
the centre of their designs and Peter Zumthor is one of them. I will look at him as an
architect who has designed The Therme Vals where he has created a sensory building and
has designed from the interior to the exterior which is portrayed in the building, showing
that more is happening on the interior. This show’s how he has given care to the use of the
building, which could be how people are going to travel in this space, material, have an
affect on awakening the senses. Peter Zumthor has not created the Therme Vals as a one
off building but has many other projects which have focused on the human well-being,
senses through the use of the buildings.

Firstly, I will review each of the senses and how they are important in architecture and make
spaces more meaningful, I will reference relevant parts of how Zumthor has applied these
senses in the Therme Vals while talking about each one.

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The Senses in Architecture

Sound gives an impression of the space we are in, it can tell us more then we think like the
spatial and material qualities, it is the only sense in architecture that will come back to you
with anything you do in a building. In the Therme Vals the material that is used throughout
the building is stone, which I will talk about why Zumthor chose to construct it all out of this
material further later in the essay, but if you were to be brought into this space blind folded
without knowing where you were coming, and you start talking your voice would create an
echo. This is due to the emptiness of the space and material used but because you don’t
now this, the sense Sound would give you a hint of the spacial and material qualities, for
you to guess what kind of space you are in. In your houses your voices would not create an
echo because the environment is acoustically low key due to the furniture, carpets, that are
there for it not too.

Sight is the dominant sense in all the senses and this is because it allows you to get a first
impression of the buildings and make your first judgments about its form, and spatial
qualities through what you see. It can trigger the sense Touch because these two senses
are somehow united. As humans we have the need to Touch things, to test how it feels. An
ordinary example of this in our lives is that, when you go out to shop and you see
something that you want, you approach it and you Touch it, feeling the texture, material
and this is the same in architecture too. Sometimes we don’t realise that we do these but
when we go into a building, things that catch our Sight we approach and Touch it, testing
to see how it feels any different from what it looks like, and so we use both these senses
together one after the other. Sight can also exclude the other senses and become a
dominant sense on its own, if the architecture only wants its audience to experience this. If
the form is very powerful the Sight might not even be considered to trigger the other
senses after it, and this depends on how the architects have approached to the senses with
that building. Does it want Sight to trigger the other senses or not. Examples of this in
modern architecture today are Skyscrapers. They are not buildings which consider sensory
experiences very much, they are more about the form, and architecture has the ability to
control how it wants people’s senses to act as they can control this with material, form, and
other spatial qualities. In the case of the Therme Vals the sense Sight triggers to awaken the
other senses more than the form.

We human’s we have the need to Touch things to see how our bodies would react to them
and this is because Touch can be triggered through the other senses, Sight, Sound, Smell,
Taste. Touch is a sense which is like the tester after some of these senses, like the Sight
which doesn’t tell us more than what the eyes see, so the Touch sense takes over and tells
us the feeling of the material and how our bodies react to it. The hands generally come to
the mind when we say Touch but actually it isn’t only this, the whole body is involved for

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example when you go to a swimming pool the whole body Touches the water so all of it is
involved. Touch is part of the sensory system consisting of all the five senses. The
Somatosensory system is part of this system, linked to the Touch sense only. Within the
Therme Vals the Touch sense is very dominant, because of the different temperature baths.
Like I mentioned above Touch, is part of the somatosensory system which consists of touch
receptors that are in every part of the body. When they feel change of temperature, pain, if
a part of the body touches something or a place the whole body is involved in with, the free
nerve endings which detect these changes that happen, show reaction to it.

Everything has a Smell, even architecture. Smell has a link with the memory. You can recall
memories that are made through Smell. The Sense Smell is more dominant in places like a
groceries store, restaurants, café’s and places which always involves a physical Smell
created, but this doesn’t mean that you can’t recall Smell in other buildings or spaces
differently if it doesn’t have this. It doesn’t always need to be in places like restaurants, or
café’s. The sense Smell can be abstract, so you can express a Smell of a space with its
spatial qualities, for example, if you take several breaths in a spacious space, and packed
space it can tell you the quality of the spaces. There is always a Smell even if it is not strong
enough, there will be a scent that will help to make memories of it, and define that space
with that Smell. At The Therme Vals, I think the sense Smell, has been used in an abstract
way because of the spatial qualities, which are open and enclosed spaces, that plays with
the different scents. The pools however have different temperatures which can have an
effect on the scent and there are pools which have flower’s in them to create a particular
Smell. The open and enclosed space’s, helps to keep the Smells separate within these
different pools and you have to travel yourself to find out, and also in each of these spaces
there are different amount’s of people, and a mixture of there different scents which fuse
together.

I have been into a Turkish bath called a ‘Hamam’ before and I remember the smell of the
hot water, the steam created by the hot water in the enclosed room, which is to trap all the
warmth and scent created from the bathing all in that space, within the packed atmosphere.
The Smell of the scents created in that space helps me recall the memories from then
today. The Smell sense wasn’t the only sensory experience I was feeling in that space as my
other senses were sparked but if I ever Smell a scent similar to this experience it recalls in
my mind back to those memories, I can remember everything about it, where else with the
other senses you can can recall certain memories too, but the memory and sense Smell has
a strong bond. We use Smell to recall other places too such as homes, hospital’s, different
cities, and this is because everything has a Smell that is different in some way. For example,
everyone has their own Smell that they create in their rooms, houses that is distinct to them,
which they can create memories and recall later. You can recall memories with Smell from
scents that you can create in a building or space of any kind.

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The sense Taste is not like the other senses because you physically cannot Taste
architecture, but you can Taste the architecture through the other senses, Sight, Sound,
Touch, Smell. Taste is an abstract sense. Through the sense Smell, you can awaken the
sense Taste, for example there are two different restaurants you can decide which suits your
Taste and make a choice between the two place’s, using the sense Smell to nurture the
Taste. Another example of Taste with another one of the senses is Sight. There are several
buildings around you but one has amazed you because that relates to your Taste, because
the first impressions of it portrays a style you like. It can also put people in different
categories, for example, in an ordinary family home two siblings share a room and they
both have different Tastes of design, furniture, and way’s of doing things which separates,
and puts them into different categories. In The Therme Vals people can find their sense of
Taste through the different temperature pools and different mysterious spaces created
through the other senses. These different spaces enable people to chose which one suits
there Taste and they feel better in which like I mentioned above, it puts people into
different categories because if everyone had the same Taste and liked the same things, we
would not have different buildings, cities, everything would be the same. That’s why it is
important how architects use the other senses to awaken the sense Taste in their buildings
they create.

The Therme Vals: Design

Peter Zumthor is a Swiss Architect, born in Basel, Switzerland. He is the architect of the
Therme Vals. Apart from this building, Zumthor has designed several other buildings which
focus on sensory experiences, nature, and simplicity. In an interview (Architectural Journal
editor Christine Murray, 02.06.2011, pg 10), Zumthor said ‘’Be yourself, love the profession,
love building, I didn’t set out to make a career, I set out to make good buildings.’’ His
buildings have portrayed what he has said here because in today’s architecture there are
many designs that make me think particularly as an Interior Architecture student that there
aren’t as many architects who consider what Zumthor has in his buildings. I am concluding
this because of the architecture that is out there, Skyscrapers and tall-rise buildings. Steven
Holl said in an interview, (Arch Daily editor Vanessa Quirk, 08.11.2016) ‘’ (…) I’d say that
Architecture doesn’t have to be large to be meaningful’’. I think this quite touches on very
well to Zumthor’s buildings and todays architecture of skyscrapers and tall rise buildings.
The way Zumthor works with the environment and builds considering the area he designs
around, the use of the building, where else with skyscrapers and tall rise buildings they are
larger buildings but don’t get across a meaning much as the small ones because they don’t
consider as much of the nature, natural light, the use of the building which could be the
senses, they could bring into the building for the well being of the human beings, and for
them to express the building sensually rather than nothing. Through the research I did into
some of Zumthor’s other buildings I could see something common in the way he is

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designing which is that he is creating spaces which trigger people’s sense’s through
movement, so they have to discover themselves. Moving about in the spaces, there has to
be something that triggers you to move about, and in the Therme Vals this is the daylight.

In the Serpentine Pavilion in 2011 Zumthor’s garden design was a garden which was in a
black box as the exterior in a garden but you don’t now what is inside it until you enter it.
The interior is a garden of exotic plants from all different kinds, and as you start walking you
discover these. The Therme Vals is similar to this design as well because until you walk
through the corridor from the hotel which links the both and start travelling through it you
don’t now what is waiting for you when you look at it from the exterior. Zumthor creates
small thing’s that are not large in scale but they give people an experience to express the
space sensually. The movement in his buildings add a unique style to him because
especially at the Therme Vals which, is a spa where people go to relax, he has approached
the term relax differently, by letting people find their own way to what relaxation is.

The Therme Vals, was Zumthor’s second architectural project after the Kunsthaus Bregenz.
He started this project in 1993 while his first project was still under construction and was
completed before that project, in 1996. The Therme Vals is a hotel and spa combined via a
tunnel to the spa building in Graubunden Canton, Switzerland. The first inspiration of
creating a spa underground came to Zumthor through viewing the place and looking at
existing structures that could inspire him. They found between Ilanz and the Vals,
Switzerland, galleries and tunnels constructed beneath the ground which inspired him
further with the idea of creating an underground building. He came across quarries where
they mine stone which, interested him that he did further research and discovered different
types, layer’s, colours of stone.

The Main inspiration for the Thermal Bath’s at Vals design today is the Turkish baths. ‘’ (…)
But there was a colour photograph of the Rudas Baths in Budapest dating to the days of
the Turks, which I had copied from a book and stuck on my wall’’ (Peter Zumthor, Therme
Vals, Scheidegger & Spies, pg 27). This quote shows how the Turkish Baths had inspired
Zumthor and that when you look at the building today you can make relevance’s with the
Turkish Baths but the Therme Vals is more modern and the the use of the two is different.
Zumthor has created a different interior that you don’t have in Turkish Baths. In the Turkish
Baths you bath, and that today different facilities have been added to it but it is actually a
bath for the public, where else in the Therme Vals it is a spa, a place you can relax and
discover different pools. Also when Zumthor visited the Turkish Bath’s to get a clearer vision
of the experience of being in one, he discovered that they change their cloths, relax after
bathing in the same place and this influenced him in the designing of the Therme Vals to
create spaces which give the same experience of feeling welcome, but in their own culture

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of changing, so he put the changing rooms inside the building as soon as you enter
through the long narrow corridor.

They created block drawings which had started to depict what the interior was going to
look like but also they were building from inside the mountain in front of the existing hotel
and extending it out a bit which formed the exterior naturally in a way because they didn’t
think about it separately apart from that it will be coming out of the mountain as much as
they did with the interior. The thing that Zumthor wanted to achieve with the building is
that it looks natural and it fits in like it was always there and it actually come’s out of the
mountain naturally.

Therme Vals: Senses

Looking at the question I started the essay with how Zumthor has responded to all the
senses at The Therme Vals. Through the analysis I did I have come to a conclusion that one
of the aspects for Zumthor to create a sensory building for people was so that they
experience different temperature baths through a discovery of there own, triggering the
senses, with the support that the material stone gives. He has created a maze type of
building which you have to travel through and explore it yourselves and throughout this
process the atmosphere created with the support of the material stone, which is smooth on
the floor but on the wall the stone is layered on top of each other and so at some parts it
has this bumpy texture, and when there is light reflected on the walls this become more
visible to the eye which can stimulate the Sight and Touch sense.

The thing that triggers your senses to awaken one after another when you are travelling
through this building is that the material stone is a bold and heavy material and you feel
this when you see it, touch the material, and how it responds back to you. The way it sits
there in the spaces the, big geometric cubes adds to this feeling, but the spaces in
between give you a hint and lead you to the light and view of the outside. Like in Greek
buildings the columns were the walls and from the space in between you would get the
daylight coming through. The interior of the Therme Vals is like this there are these big
block columns. Stone doesn’t absorb the sound, it reflects it back so you can hear the
sound of the water and the Sound of the people throughout the building. The daylight
bought into the building through the long thin openings in the ceiling, where rays of
daylight fall on the stone walls, and water help to stimulate the Touch sense. It
automatically creates a feeling of wanting to Touch the light that falls on the walls feeling
the warmth of it, and following the light. (see fig 1 and 2 to see how the light falls on the
wall)

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The second aspect is the design of the interior, which is partitioned with geometric cubes in
the one big space from ceiling to floor blocking the view, and daylight coming in which you
can glimpse as you enter. You have to make a choice of which route to follow, which
stimulates the sense Taste. This also stimulates the sense Sight that you look around and
express thoughts and judgments about the space from what you see for the first time. As
you start discovering the building, making your way using your Sight sense, you see that
they are not pure blocks from the ceiling to the floor, they are spaces which have showers,
WC’s, changing rooms, different temperature pools. You can enter one of the pools, which
will stimulate your Sight, Touch, Smell, Sound senses. The Sound of the water and the Smell
of the space if it is the flower pool where there are flowers put in the water to create a scent
to fill that space, and if its the fire bath the smell of the steam arising, or the scents of the
people who are there, fused together. This has already triggered some of the senses one
after another, which you might not realise because it happening very quick and fusing into
each other. As you come out of a pool, you take the water with you, leaving a trail of
footsteps by walking out of the pool onto the floor, guiding someone else, to go and
discover too.

There are aspects of nature bought into the building. The material that is used for the
building stone comes from nature, it is mined from quarries in fact the stone used in the
Therme Vals comes from a local quarry near to the site in Vals. The way Zumthor has used
the stone again in a cave like structure makes it feel natural which is what he wanted to
achieve with the design and he even responded to it writing ‘’Building in stone, building
with stone, building into the mountain, building out of the mountain, being inside the
mountain (…)’’ (Peter Zumthor, Therme Vals, Scheidegger & Spiess). Throughout the
interior Zumthor has designed it so that you get a glimpse of the landscape of the valley
outside and the beams of daylight that come into the building by windows within the space
looking out to the valley and daylight from the openings in the ceiling. Zumthor has used
these big cubes sitting there in the interior to control the daylight, to get people to move
around the building to get around the space. The building is built out of the mountain and
at the point where it stops they have carried on as a flat roof covered with grass. There are
rays of daylight that comes through these openings which adds an effect to the water in the
indoor pools, enabling it to create a shimmering effect, and to stimulate people’s senses to
go into the pools, to feel the warmth of the light coming down from the ceiling reflecting
into the water. It also guides people that there is more daylight as the building grows out of
the mountain as they come through the dark. The daylight brought into the building has a
major effect for the building because daylight has a different quality which gives people
energy and well-being, it also has this quality of warmth and it is felt on the body. Zumthor
has applied this very cleverly through out the design and it would not be as effective and
sensual if the daylight was excluded.

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Conclusion

Peter Zumthor’s aim was to create a sensory experience for the people of all genders, ages,
to relax in this stone and water combined space. To create a building which you have to
move and discover yourself which will stimulate the senses. Zumthor has achieved to create
a full sensory building which targets to the culture of the Vals and bringing their own culture
of bathing with the inspiration he took from the middle eastern culture of bathing, into this
building and created a modern way of bathing through the material stone which sets out a
bold statement through his simple and geometric design which doesn’t contrast with the
body, but oppositely makes it feel relaxing and welcome.

In conclusion I would like to add my opinion about The Therme Vals and how Zumthor has
responded to the senses in the Therme Vals through two aspects that I concluded which are
the material Stone and the interior design. This building show’s the body what it is capable
of triggering and it gets a meaning when they meet with the body. Zumthor has responded
to his other buildings in the way he has with the Therme Vals designing from the interior to
the exterior. Most of the architecture buildings today don’t design like Zumthor does, and
that’s why they don’t stimulate the senses. Zumthor takes advantage of the natural sources
we have and brings them into his designs to dominate and lead the space. We live in a
world today where technology is very major and is rapidly growing and we can do most
things that we couldn’t a few years ago but I don’t think that Architecture has taken
advantage of this. We have tall skyscrapers and tall-rise building’s; architects are racing with
each other to create the tallest skyscraper. In my opinion skyscrapers all look the same even
if the form is different from the exterior, this doesn’t impact the interior space’s, as they all
look similar, they give the same feeling and that there is nothing that stimulates the other
senses apart from the Sight. Expressing a space with a sensual experience helps to make
the space more special and meaningful. It creates memories forever, which can be recalled.
If you compare skyscrapers with the Therme Vals, where you don’t see the form of the
exterior because, you enter through an underground tunnel from the hotel. The Sight sense
is dominant in the interior of The Therme Vals to guide to get around the spaces, and
awakens the other senses as well with it, through the discovery they have to make. Zumthor
has designed the Therme Vals coming out of the mountain, if he was to build a tall rise
building there it would not fit in the landscape of the village Vals and be very distracting.

I have tried to pass across in this essay how we need our senses to feel, make memories,
and to experience things sensually in a building in accordance to buildings that don’t
design to stimulate the senses by looking at the building, The Therme Vals where Zumthor
has responded to stimulate these senses. He has created a building where when people
enter the space, and start discovering, that then they value the allure of it.

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 Illustrations

Fig 1 – The daylight falling on the
walls and
reflecting in the pool. You can also
see the
openings in the ceiling.
Fig 2 – The daylight falling on the walls from the
openings in the ceiling also a beam of daylight entering
from an entrance/exit from around the corner it reflecting
on the floor. It also looks like there’s reflection of the
pool coming out from a hidden space from the left side
in the image.

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Bibliography

Books

Peter Zumthor Therme Vals, Scheidegger & Spiess

Peter Zumthor Atmospheres, Birkhauser

The Eyes Of The Skin Architecture And The Senses, Juhani Pallasmaa

Journals

Architectural Review, August 2015, Pages 30, 31, 35

Architectural journal, 12.02.2009 Pages 48, 49

Architectural Journal, 02.06.2011, Pages 8, 9, 10 ,18, 19

Architectural Journal, 16.04.2009, Pages, 5, 18, 41, 42, 43

Websites

https://www.dezeen.com/2016/09/25/peter-zumthor-therme-vals-spa-baths-photography-
fernando-guerra/

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healthcare-design-at-his-maggies-centre-barts

http://dressingtheair.com/sense/smell/architecture/vals-therme-600.htm

https://atmospherics3.wordpress.com/4-therme-vals/

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https://www.reference.com/science/reflection-sound-
1670d3cdd1d9726b?qo=contentSimilarQuestions

https://lewisdimension.wordpress.com/2010/07/21/7-senses-in-architecture/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JzmVfSvKdRk

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http://marialorenalehman.com/post/architectural-building-for-all-the-senses

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