Archinect - News

New graphic novel is set in Peter Zumthor's Therme Vals in Switzerland

2019-10-31T18:27:00-04:00

Peter Zumthor's Therme Vals, the hotel and spa in Switzerland, was designed intentionally devoid of clocks so that visitor's sense of time would be suspended and immeasurable. Completed in 1996, there is a legend about a mountain in the village of Vals that is said to have a mountain that periodically swallows people.

In his debut graphic novel, Swimming in Darkness, cartoonist Lucas Harari builds on this modern mythology. The new publication centers around an architecture school dropout named Pierre, who, after a breakdown, travels to Vals to visit Zumthor's baths, which were the subject of his unfinished thesis. Upon his arrival, Pierre discovers secret rooms within the Therme Vals and attempts to uncover their hidden truths.

This psychological thriller drops the reader into Zumthor's work and uses it as a vehicle to explore this young protagonist's existential predicament. Concerning the work, Lucas Harari said:

I visited the thermal baths of Vals as a teenager and the place str...

"The Erection, the Inkblot, and the RFRA Riff-Raff": Morphosis' Vals tower, Zumthor's LACMA, and Hoosier hospitality confronts RFRA on Archinect Sessions Episode #23

2015-04-02T19:25:00-04:00

It’s been a strange week, especially in Indiana. On this episode, before getting to the RFRA-ff, we hit on a neat architectural inversion: LA-heavyweight Morphosis designs a "middle-finger" luxury tower in the quaint mountain town of Vals, Switzerland, while the subtly grand Swiss museum-master Peter Zumthor pushes a calligraphic inkblot for LACMA on LA's Miracle Mile. Vals is already home to Zumthor's Therme Spa. It’s like Trading Spaces, but with starchitects!

On the latter-half of our show, Amelia, Donna and Ken talk with Brian Newman, Archinect Sessions’ legal correspondent, about Indiana’s controversial revisions to the Religious Freedom Restoration Act – with our own Donna Sink on the ground in Indianapolis, we dig into how this national and local issue would affect architects and the profession.

Paul is away this week, on vacation in the outer reaches of Peru, blissfully out of Skype's reach. He'll be back as soon as he re-enters the connected world.

As always, you can send us y...

Thom Mayne's Vals Tower Draws Criticism

2015-04-02T15:47:00-04:00

Release a rendering of a very tall, very shiny glass tower looming over an idyllic mountain village and the Internet goes bananas. That's what happened earlier this week when Morphosis Architects of Los Angeles released its design renderings for a new luxury hotel in Vals, a low-key spa town in the Swiss Alps. The design, conceived by Morphosis founder Thom Mayne, would check in at a whopping 1,250 feet, making it the tallest building in the European Union.

Morphosis turns Vals into "Skyscraper Village"

2015-03-25T14:36:00-04:00

Plans for a 381m high luxury hotel tower in a sleepy Alpine village have just been unveiled – and the designer is convinced it will fit right in. But is it any more than a castle in the air? [...] The new hotel tower, designed by Pritzker prizewinner Thom Mayne’s practice, Morphosis, will shoot up 381m into the clouds (almost a third taller than the Shard), a looming spectre visible for miles around the tiny alpine village. It is a gigantic mirror-clad middle finger aimed at the region [...].

peter zumthor as developer?

2012-11-24T20:17:00-05:00

"In 2009 we built two timber houses, the Oberhus and the Unterhus, in the hamlet of Leis, just over 1,500 m above sea level in the community of Vals in Grisons. From 1 December 2012 onward we are letting out the Unterhus for vacations. A third timber house, the Türmlihus, will soon complete this little ensemble. The Türmlihus will welcome its first guests in autumn 2013. We are very much looking forward to having guests in our timber vacation homes in Leis. Annalisa and Peter Zumthor"

peter and annalisa zumthor are, apparently, getting into the hospitality business. one - and soon to be two houses, designed by zumthor and located in the small town of leis, will be able to be leased out beginning next week. both houses appear to be located adjacent to a house designed for annalisa when she was the manager of the thermal baths in vals. (zumthor lost a bid two years ago to buy the thermal baths from the town, who sold it to a young developer).

given that the leasing arrangements are made directly through a website apparently set up by the pritzker prize laureate, one would assume this is being directly managed by either his or his wife's office. at the very least, it could end up being yet another opportunity to 'reside' in one of the architect's homes. (these come on top of 'the secular retreat' home being designed for alain de botton's 'living architecture' program of rental homes throughout england.)

it's an interesting turn for zumthor and one i perso...

Peter Zumthor loses bid for Vals thermal baths

2012-03-13T00:19:00-04:00

Swiss star architect Peter Zumthor has lost a battle for ownership of the spa and hotel complex in Vals, eastern Switzerland, which he designed. The commune, which owns the complex, decided on Friday night to sell it to 35-year-old property developer Remo Stoffel.