The sublimation of the ordinary. A phenomenological analysis of the Gugalun house. Peter Zumthor (1990-1994)
Aparicio Fraga, Jaimea and Ruiz Muñoz, Cristinab
aIndependent Researcher, Valencia, Spain. bIndependent Researcher, Valencia, Spain.
Abstract:
Between 1990 and 1994, Peter Zumthor (Basel, 1943) carried out an enlargement of an old country house built in the seventeenth century in Canton of Graubünden, with a very modest program: a kitchen, a bathroom, two bedrooms and a heating system. Under the same roof joins the primitive element and its expansion, through an intimate gesture in which a wooden skin blends with what already exists to form an unique element, whose horizontal lines define rhythms that harmonize both actions.
Despite the apparent simplicity of the action, when we deepen in the study of the project and the house itself, it reveals some concepts that transcend the spatial definition of the house, making essential an beyond-the-visual analysis. Here, the architecture is felt by the other senses: the hapticity and the smell of the wood -rooted in the culture of the place- which links the new space and the old one, the whisper of the foreboded nature that is framed by horizontal windows, the heat of the chimney, understood as the center of the home.
These are topics that anticipate the placement of the architect in front of the landscape, the act of inhabiting (next Heidegger's conception of-being-in-the-world), the light, the matter, or the atmospheres -which are mentioned for the first time- that he will develop in his later works.
The joining with the archaic, give us the opportunity to analyze the house from its deepest meaning, and the essential points that become a series of spaces in a real home; as well as, to study the inhabitant's shelter which in addition to provide his physical needs in a comfortable way, preserve his privacy and show his personality.
Keywords: Zumthor, atmosphere, phenomenology, matter, house, landscape.