11.2008 Vals
Therme Vals by Peter Zumthor

‘Atmosphere is my style’
J.W.Turner to John Ruskin, from Peter Zumthor ‘Atmosphere’
One lucky enough to visit the Vals after dark, enters into a space with intricately layered deep blue-gray natural stone frame.
Very dark, near silent, the sound of dripping water is louder than whispering. The stone reflects acoustics with a spiritual quality.
Walking towards the baths, your bare feet start sensing the warmth through the grainy natural texture of the stone. Seduced by the warmth, your instinct tends to make you look down to see what you are feeling.
Sensing that you are getting closer to the water, you raise your head.
What your eyes are greeted are a lustrous collage of dark stones and dim blue illuminated ripples, beckoning you down a sloping walkway into the water, light.
The slope turns to step, each steps taking you deeper into the warm bath.
Deeper you enter, lower your level of view gets. Then your view discovers the snow framed by the lowest windows.
The baths act as a lampshade casting a dull glow onto the walls. Under the water, the lighting takes on a hypnotic fell that seems to guide you, between the various baths, exploring the different atmosphere.
Some hot, some cold, some deep, some shallow, some communal, and some personal.
The most sensational is being the outside spa.
Exiting the internal spa through a light chain curtain, the moon, stars and deep darkness of the night sky instantly appear very close.
Everything below water remains the same temperature, while everything above catches the cold night air, shrouded in steam. Lightened up in darkness, the steam becomes a screen which projects vague silhouettes.
Voices can be heard though you could see no one.
You would feel like you were separated from real life in darkness, with the power of natural water and stones.
Resistance of water, the warmth, snow, moon light and stones…

‘Right from the start, there was a feeling for the mystical nature of a world of stone inside the mountain, for darkness and light, for the reflection of light upon water, for the diffusion of light through steam filled air, for the different sounds that water makes in stone surroundings, for warm stone and naked skin, for the ritual of bathing.’
Peter Zumthor
Posted in Architecture, アート, 建築
Tags: Hélène Binet, Peter Zumthor, Switzerland, Therme Vals