Peter Zumthor

Peter Zumthor was born in Basel on 26 April 1943, the son of the cabinet maker Oscar Zumthor. He learned the cabinet maker's trade between 1958 and 1962, then studied at the Kunstgewerbeschule in Basel and at the Pratt Institute in New York. He went on to work for the monument preservation office of the canton of Graubünden, advising builders, analysing historic villages and carrying out a few restorations. In 1979 he opened his own practice in Haldenstein, near Chur, where his studio is still based; in 1996 he became a professor at the Academy of Architecture in Mendrisio.

His first works stand in Graubünden: shelters protecting Roman remains in Chur (1986), the Sogn Benedetg chapel in Sumvitg, consecrated in 1989 to replace the one an avalanche destroyed in 1984, housing for the elderly in Masans, and the Gugalun house in Versam. The thermal baths at Vals, opened in 1996, follow, then the Kunsthaus Bregenz, opened in 1997.

At the Kunsthaus Bregenz, three walls of exposed concrete carry the building, which is wrapped in a skin of etched glass that filters daylight into the galleries. At the Bruder Klaus chapel (2007) in the Eifel, the concrete of the walls was laid in layers, and the interior was cast around 112 tree trunks that were then burned for three weeks; the blackened imprint of the wood remains on the walls, and rain falling through the opening in the roof gathers in a shallow pool on the floor. In Cologne, the Kolumba museum (2007) rises from the remains of a bombed church. In Devon, at Secular Retreat, the shared living space stands among hand-rammed concrete columns that carry a cantilevered concrete roof; in Los Angeles, the LACMA David Geffen Galleries, built of concrete and glass and opened in 2026, let light and shadow work in dialogue. In Norway, with the artist Louise Bourgeois, he designed the Steilneset memorial in Vardø, dedicated to the 91 people condemned in the Finnmark witchcraft trials.

He received the Pritzker Prize in 2009. The jury describes an architect who turns down most commissions and accepts a project only when he feels a deep affinity for its programme, then oversees its realisation down to the last detail. He also won the Praemium Imperiale in 2008 and the RIBA Royal Gold Medal.