The Sword in the Stone by Hugh McEwen

The Sword in the Stone

“imaging”

The Sword in the Stone Phenomenology and structuralism in Vals Therme by Peter Zumthor Written by Hugh McEwen

Hugh McEwen, Sketchbook D, 17/09/06

So began my exploration of the Vals Therme, and the beginning of my narrative. For this is a building aching to have stories told behind its back. The space that Zumthor has produced is so saturated with personal experience that an entire anthology of poetry should be written within it - each poem as dense and careful as the layers of gneiss that make up the structure of the bath’s forms. To quote Zumthor “I believe that human effort can bring a work – a novel, a poem or a string quartet – to life. When it succeeds this creates a separate world – a cosmos – and this gives rise to a particular understanding, an emotion that 1 forms a whole.” . The approach of regarding a building as a series of experiences can be traced back to the writings of Edmund Husserl. He began modern phenomenology th in the early 20 century with his idea of creating a science from the critical 2 perception of the world . However this interpretation is not expansive enough for the building and Martin Heidegger - a student of Husserl’s - comes closer with his 3 proposition that experience only comes from being in the world . This was furthered th by Maurice Merleau-Ponty in the mid 20 century with the concept that perception is 4 borne of the interaction of the body with the world . I believe this approach is most apt as Zumthor writes “That is the first transcendent level in my work: the 5 attempt to conceive of architecture as a human environment” . But even though these baths are resolutely about the body, the mind is triggered by these senses, and here the poetics come to life. Gaston Bachelard wrote of a “phenomenology of 6 the imagination” with regards to writing poetry, and in his writings lie some of the qualities found in Vals Therme. These poetic experiences, or “Images” as Zumthor calls them, are one half of the work - “...it is only between the reality 7 of things and the imagination that the spark of the work of art is kindled.”

Richard Copans; Architecture! Peter Zumthor - Les Thermes De Pierre (The Therme of Stone); Europe Images International Arte Vidéo; 2001; part 3 2 Jonathan A. Hale; Building Ideas: An Introduction to Architectural Theory; John Wiley & Sons, Chichester, England; 2000; p.95 3 Ibid; p.98 4 Ibid; p.106 5 Peter Zumthor; Atmospheres: Architectural Environments. Surrounding Objects; Birkhauser, Basel, Switzerland; p.65 6 Gaston Bachelard; The Poetics of Space; Beacon Press, Boston, USA; 1994; Xviii 7 Peter Zumthor; Thinking Architecture; Birkhauser, Basel, Switzerland; 2005; p.36

table plan

For while this is a space for experience, it is also one created by a matrix of syntactics, as Zumthor puts it “Mountain, stone, water, building in stone, building with stone, building into the mountain – our attempts to give this chain of words an architectural interpretation, to translate into architecture their meanings and sensuousness, guided our design for the building and step by step gave it form.” 8 Modern Structuralism began with Ferdinand De Saussure and his definition that language was based on a “system of differences” bound together by an underlying 9 “deep structure” . However De Saussure did not live long enough to put his work into practice. This task was left to Claude Levi-Strauss - first using structuralism to analyse relationships between families in primitive communities 10 and then to analyse “mythemes” . These mythemes were the parole of myths archetypal differences in meaning creating a way of making sense out of age old opposing concepts, similar to the Prague Schools study of “phonemes” as differences of sound. Aldo van Eyck formalised the architectural concept of these 11 “-emes” in his writing on “twin-phenomena” – solid-void, inside-outside, 12 “darkness and light” - and versions of these binaries are found throughout the thermal baths and the design process this thinking engenders - “...my favourite ideas is this: to plan the building as a pure mass of shadow then, afterwards, to put in light as if you were hollowing out the darkness, as if the light were a new 13 mass seeping in.” Taking the writings on structure as a way to re-examine semiotics is also a useful path of inquiry. In the mid 20th century Roland Barthes analysed contemporary, real world topics and found more flexible readings, especially from person to person, leading him to post-structuralist conclusions 14. The implication that meaning was not fixed (furthered by Umberto Eco) and changed (written about by Aldo Rossi) led to a style that could use the language of architecture as it pleased because the sign was arbitrary – Post-modernism 15. Thus my exploratory 16 narrative is not a pre-determined one. Sympathetic to the views of Barthes , the building is a set of critical narratives that can be appropriated by the user. The architect as “author-God” is not present here – “For Zumthor, idea is not a 17 script that must accompany the project, in order to aid its legibility” . The building has no definitive reading, all are subjective or from a collective history. There is no prescribed path through the building (though it is not disorganised), and where it does become more path like, the spaces is two way, suggesting an inherent cyclicality to the building. Even the phenomenological aspect of the building is non-prescribed – moving from the 45 degree bath to the 35 degree pool will have a radically different feeling to moving from the 12 degree bath to the 35 degree pool, yet both are valid systems of interaction.

Peter Zumthor / photographs by Hélène Binet; Works: Buildings and Projects 1979-1997; Birkhauser, Basel, Switzerland; 1999; p.156 9 Jonathan A. Hale; Op. Cit.; pp.133-134 10 Ibid; p.138 11 Ibid; p.157 12 Peter Zumthor; The architecture of the spa complex, part one; Therme Vals, Vals, Switzerland; http://www.therme-vals.ch/zumthor/index_en.html 13 Peter Zumthor; Atmospheres; Op. Cit.; P. 59 14 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barthes 15 Jonathan A. Hale; Op. Cit.; p. 145 16 Ibid; p.142 17 David Chipperfield; Thermal Bath at Vals by Peter Zumthor; AA Files 32; Autumn 1996; p. 72

site

Founded in the 14 century , Vals sits deep in the Swiss Alps. From the first 19 documented use of the springs, in 1670 , onwards there were a number of bath houses built on the spring and, by degrees, the baths became more established and more visited, each new owner surpassing the ambitions and construction of the one before. This repetition carried on until the arrival of Karl Kurt Vorlop who, in 20 1970 , opened the modernist spa hotel that surrounds the baths. Poor health forced 21 Vorlop to sell up and the complex passed to the bank SBG in 1974 . The condition of the baths declined until a buyer was found to take on the project â&#x20AC;&#x201C; the local 22 council. By 1983 the council, and therefore the inhabitants, of Vals owned the spa and a redevelopment plan was formed. The predicted cost of fully renovating the 23 complex climbed to 44 million SFR , so it was decided to stagger the process. The first part was to be the new spa building and in 1994 Peter Zumthor was appointed 24 to build the structure, which was opened in December 1996 . Such has been the popularity of the Therme that the next stages of the building work are being carried out, and Peter Zumthor is updating the interior of the tower blocks to provide a more holistic experience, the spa having been listed in 1998.

Peter Schmid; The History of Therme Vals; which appears in Hotel Therme Vals / Edited by Annalisa Zumthor; Stone and Water: Culture and Events Summer 2006; Anton Schob, Switzerland; June 2006; p. 14 19 Ibid; p.14 20 Ibid; p.26 21 Ibid; p.26 22 Ibid; p.27 23 Ibid; p.27 24 Ibid; p.27

front

roof

As I make my way up the hill, the vista of the front edge of the Therme reveals itself. Its stone piled up in layers, exposing the geomorphic solidarity of the mountain’s history, in comparison to the archetypal transformation of cities’ 25 layers in Aldo Rossi’s readings . Immediately the idea that Zumthor’s building 26 is synchronic and “has always been there – before all the others” becomes apparent, especially in comparison with the white 70’s blocks built, henge-like, around the side and even over the top of the baths. “Buildings always say 27 something to a street” - here the building is presented as a langue of the mountain. An alternative reading, similar to the arguably phenomenological Fallingwater, is 28 that this is a building constructed to enhance the feeling of place . Indeed in the words of the proposal put to the council of Vals by Zumthor “The design concept is centred on the themes of mountain, inside the mountain, stone and 29 30 water” thereby creating “a bath borne of the mountains” , somewhat similar to 31 the “primitive hut” written about by Abbe Laugier , which is built out of it’s surroundings.

Jonathan A. Hale; Op. Cit.; p.146 Richard Copans; Op. Cit.; part 1 27 Peter Zumthor; Atmospheres; Op. Cit.; p.49 28 Jonathan Hale; The Return of the Body – Phenomenology in architecture; Lecture given as part of the Theory and Criticism of Architecture lecture series, University of Nottingham, United Kingdom, 2007 29 Peter Zumthor; Botschaft der Gemeinde Vals zuhanden der Gemeindeversammlung vom. 18 Marz 1994, Traktandum: Projekt Therme Vals, Bad und Therapie quoted by; Peter Schmid; Op. Cit; p.28 30 Richard Copans; Op. Cit.; part 1 31 Jonathan Hale; Op. Cit; Lecture 26

entrance

changing

Splitting right, and around one of the hotel dolmen, I arrive at a very long, black corridor that leads to the reception. Passing along this, further underground 32 and therefore further from the world outside , sounds, heat and humidity slowly build up, giving a better picture of what is to come than any visual sense. Indeed 33 “the cellar dream irrefutably increases reality” – my senses are more stimulated and more sensitive. Having paid for the ticket, I pass through a turnstile, its rotation inferring that I will be back through it before I know, but with a slight change. Both the temperature of the brass and the neon inscription indicate as to what is ahead, though by different means. Walking along the next linear corridor, the wall on the right is punctuated by small fountains, from which spill streams of iron oxide filled water. This lustrous red - which carries right 34 from the hotel into the changing rooms, but is absent afterwards - highlights how the original colouring in the water, the dominance of vision and the garments of the bathers are filtered out before passage into the spa. “You undergo a change by 35 removing your everyday clothes” and this gets bathers “in a more receptive sensory state, for they are all as near naked as contemporary indoor decorum 36 allows”

On the left are sweaty black leather drapes that act as doors throughout the structure. Neither open, nor closed, they allow sound, light and temperature to wick around their edges, rather than imitating a wall as the doors that denote private spaces do. Entering one of the changing rooms I have moved from one claustrophobic corridor to another which rotates around a central leather bench – coherent with the resting spaces in other culture’s baths. The walls are panelled in lustrous red mahogany, a surface that you brush against while changing, rather than reaching out to touch, with chests for vestments behind.

Raymund Ryan; Primal Therapy – thermal baths in Vals, Swizerland; The Architectural Review; August 1997 33 Gaston Bachelard; The Poetics of Space; Op. Cit.; p.20 34 Hotel Therme Vals / Edited by Annalisa Zumthor; Information and Prices 2006/2007; Anton Schob, Switzerland; 4.0 edition, June 2006; p.9 -“Red Restaurant”, “Stucco Rooms” 35 Richard Copans; Op. Cit.; part 3 36 Peter Davey; Zumthor the Shaman – Peter Zumthor, winner of the 1998 Carlsberg Prize for Architecture; The Architectural Review; October 1998; p.70

stairs

Once disrobed and through the next curtain, my view expands. A vista made from cut stone, a picture plane from my elevated perspective, but “Natural materials – stone, brick and wood – allow our vision to penetrate their surfaces and enable us 37 to become convinced of the veracity of matter” . This hegemony of vision and the prescription of path, which has been eroded through the passage to the baths, is 38 finally broken down as I approach the water, down the “clearly ceremonial” stairs. The solid, tubular brass handrail acts as a tactile buoy, it leads me and steadies me towards the water.

Arriving at this new level I am presented with a myriad of new paths to choose from and create my own experience of this place. Personally I walked into the first of the stone blocks that had presented to me and, as structured by the etiquette of bathing, had a shower. In these showers an over riding perception of water as heavy light and stone as floating darkness became apparent, somewhat at odds to Edgar Allen Poe’s poetic use of dark and dead water. I comment on it now because of how obvious it was here, but the theme recurs throughout the building as one of the 39 aforementioned “twin-phenomena” . Entering the hollowed out stone with its murky interior, I turn on one of the showers, via an industrial brass handle. The faucet of the shower is not visible, due to the light source being below it, thus it appears that the water gushes out of the blackness hovering above and creates its own light as it falls. This “luminous water” also runs down the walls of the baths as I exit the shower stone and look to my right. Here the - apparently floating - ceiling is broadly cracked and light spills down the wall, along the same path that water would take, rather than an even slick. But “these 40 illumination joints are also the building’s expansion joints / bewegungsfugen” , a rigorous sense of craftsmanship ensuring that these coincide.

37 Juhani Pallasmaa; The eyes of the skin: architecture and the senses; Wiley-Academy, Chichester, England; 2005; p.31 38 Raymund Ryan; Op. Cit. 39 Jonathan A. Hale; Op. Cit.; p.157 40 Peter Zumthor/ essays by Sigrid Hauser and Peter Zumthor, photographs by Hélène Binet; Therme Vals; Sheidegger & Spiess, Zurich, Switzerland; 2007; p.32

plan of light joints and drain joints

As I descend into the main pool, it becomes apparent that the rest of the space 41 and structure is organised around it. This “pinwheel principle” creates the 42 “meander” while the “zipper principle” “closes off the front edge of the 43 building” . The underlying repetition of rules slowly becomes obvious - “While working on the design we devised geometrical rules for the configuration of the 44 blocks.” – creating an iterative design process for the forms, similar to Eisenman’s. For example each of the 15 “ceiling slabs” is attached to a “pillar 45 block”, which it lies flush to on at least one side . These tables are then 46 attached to a “foot slab” , flush to a different side of the block, meaning that every block has one side dipped in water and one side washed in light. Even the blocks are built to a determined pattern - the Steinschichtenplan - which are 47 “rules for knitting” . To build the walls a composite – not just a façade - of layered gneiss, quarried from just 1000km up the valley, and concrete creates Valser Verbundmauerwerk 48, unique to this building. Note that in the plans that the blocks are continuous through both floors and that “...black is for the concrete stone walls, black also stands for the mountainside from which the 49 building emerges” , illustrating the symbolism of the construction to the mountain.

But, instead of parametric design, this construction could be read as an extension of the human form. The stone planks that make up the walls were cut to be 50 easily carried and the walls are constructed in modules 15cm high - “The reason: 51 the 15 centimetres corresponds to the height of a step” . Thus we can break down the monolithic forms of the building into “multilithic” ones, related to our scale. In terms of movement, the meander of the plan encourages us to travel through the spaces, while the zipper is a promenade past the view, which in this case is not to bring the outside in, but to stop the bather going out.

Ibid.; p.82 Ibid.; p.62 43 Ibid.; p.82 44 Ibid.; p.62 45 Ibid.; p.64 46 Ibid.; p.68 47 Ibid.; p.169 48 Ibid.; p.97 49 Ibid.; P.60 50 Peter Zumthor/ essays by Sigrid Hauser and Peter Zumthor, photographs by Hélène Binet; Therme Vals; Op. Cit.; p.101 51 Ibid.; p.110 42

plan of zipper and meander

iterations of baths

stone laying

wall detail

floor slabs

pinwheel roof slabs

spa level

floor slabs

sections a - d

sections e - h

sound

fire

flower

Doubling back on myself and passing under a low roof I enter the sound bath. Henri Bergson writes “The objects which surround my body reflect its possible 52 action upon them.” And here the rough stone and the absence of seats encourage action, creating ripples that gurgle into the drains. This low sound suddenly illuminates the true nature of the space. The hollowed out form is an instrument – a stopped organ pipe – that resonates at certain frequencies of the voice, inspiring a Stochausen-like performance. In fact the whole of the Therme echoes due to the hard surface of the stone, producing an Echo to our Narcissus gazing at the beauty of the water. However this is a communal bath, in comparison to Narcissus or the individual cold bath, with people happy to sing together.

Travelling further round the pinwheel, I am struck by the change in smell before I turn the corner into the flower bath. Previously there had been the sharpness of water mixed with the fogginess of bodies, now I am arrested by scents of flowers. The black terrazzo walls close down my peripheral vision and I concentrate on the illuminated water, full of marigold petals and the aroma of lavender. Since “There 53 is a strong identity between naked skin and the sensation of home.” and these hollowed out blocks have “a hermetic quality that makes one feel at home and 54 safe” , sitting here encourages a reverie, as Bachelard explains “The house 55 allows one to dream in peace” .

Deciding to try each of the blocks, I wander back round to where I entered the bath and along to the 42 degree fire bath – it’s temperature announced by large numerals on the wall. An immediate visual entrance leads to the luminous water that shines up the red terrazzo - “temperature in this sense is physical, but psychological too. It’s in what I see, what I feel, what I touch, even with my 56 feet.” , while the seats stop movement, allowing the eyes to wander. Along with being a very visual experience, this is possibly one of the least poetically cleansing baths in the structure, the heat has a literal cleaning effect and the 57 water itself has a “verifiable healing effect” .

However, opposite the fire bath is the entrance to the 14 degree cold bath, illustrating the mytheme of fire and water. With trepidation I make my way around its corner and down. The long steps provide a slow entry, whilst the ice blue walls and the absence of seats encourage a quick exit. Also contrasting the cleansing 58 heat is that “coolness is a power of awakening” , furthering the concept of bathing as a renewal. 52

Henri Bergson; Matter and Memory; Zone Books, New York, USA; 1988; p.21 Juhani Pallasmaa; Op. Cit.; p.58 54 Hans-Joachim Müller, Eckhard Schneider, Peter Zumthor; Buildings and Projects 1986 – 2007; Kunsthaus Bregenz, 29/09/07 - 20/01/08; p.1 55 Gaston Bachelard; The Poetics of Space; Op. Cit.; p.6 56 Peter Zumthor; Atmospheres; Op. Cit.; p.35 57 Peter Zumthor/ essays by Sigrid Hauser and Peter Zumthor, photographs by Hélène Binet; Therme Vals; Op. Cit.; p.73 58 Gaston Bachelard; Water and Dreams: An Essay on the Imagination of Matter; The Dallas Institute Publications, Dallas, USA; 2006; p.31 53

Walking towards the edge of the building I enter a much darker block. The erotic discovery of the interior leading me – Acteon-like – to half expect a nymph hiding inside. Pallasmaa talks at length about tasting stone, but here in the drinking stone I taste water, via a small brass ladle, with which I collect the falling, glowing water. It has a very slightly salty and metallic taste – the writing on the wall literally describes the composition of the water.

Approaching the outside bath, I notice that this is not a place for repetition of action– dissimilar to the construction - or swimming. There are instantaneous images that will be remembered, but no deep muscular actions. Perhaps in light of the prevalence in myth of great bodies of water as un-navigable by mortals and the specificity of its function, this absence is nullified – if you want to swim, go to a swimming pool. At the start of the design process Zumthor talks about being interested in the human interactions with the landscape in the surrounding countryside – tunnels, galleries and that“...the first idea was to open up the mountain and create a 59 quarry.” This literal use of an earlier form is most obvious here, where the roof has been removed and the repetition of the blocks breaks down as if they have been blasted away. There are nooks that have no purpose here, left over from the 60 three complete revisions that the building went through over its 10 year history, giving an epistemology to the form. Staring up at the blocks, I consider that the walls are actually made of symbolic, semiotic, stone when compared to the baths at Leca da Palmeira by Alvaro Siza. In these, the actual stone of the site creates more of the structure than the concrete elements do. During the design process this stone was used even more symbolically in the mediated models used to explain the council. Perhaps then this is more of an artistic building, with obvious parallels to Beuys. Yet the effects are too solid, the meanings not an absolute way of reading the work.

Exiting the outdoor bath I notice that there are a few blocks on the edge of the building that I have not been into, the steps that rise to them and their heavy curtains setting them aside from the other baths. These dark rest spaces and the sounding stone, are perhaps the most mythologically revitalising of the areas in the building. The sounding stone only goes quiet when you stop moving, and the dim interiors propose sleep. This sleep, and waking from it, express a re-birth similar to that of Baptism or Mikvah. Indeed in the tale Immersion without Water, a Rabbi who falls asleep beside a stream instead of immersing in it, returns to the town 61 “quickened with new life” .

Richard Copans; Op. Cit.; part 2 Peter Zumthor/ essays by Sigrid Hauser and Peter Zumthor, photographs by Hélène Binet; Therme Vals; pp.57-58 61 Ibid.; p.127 60

main pool

I have to admit that the rest of the spaces I really cannot reliably write about, since I did not go into them, having not paid for a spa treatment, not needed the toilet and not noticed the sweat stone – which is commented on as being “easily 62 overlooked, not noticed until the second or third visit.” And so I leave the baths revitalised, becoming part of the outside world again, but with a slight change. I believe that the building can almost totally be described in terms of either structuralism or phenomenology, both make convincing arguments for the reasoning behind the building and an analysis of the space. This is precisely the reason that critics find it had to pigeonhole Zumthor’s style apart from a broadly modernist view on form making. This is a building about experience, whether through the educated reading of the space or the uneducated feeling of it. Having been to each of the baths, they appear as Tschumi-like follies on a formal grid, each one a possibility for an “event” or an “image”. They have been constructed as discrete variations, where each user experiences an aspect of water in their own way. Similar to Herman Herzberger’s work then, this is a building that engages with both the semiotics and the syntactics of occupying 63 architecture , providing a building which is based on formal rules, but with nodes for bathers to almost put themselves into the building. This therefore achieves what Geoffrey Broadbent concludes in A Plain Man’s Guide to the Theory of Signs in Architecture; that an entirely pragmatic building is sterile and that poetics are inescapable – to the extent that if a syntactic building were constructed, it 64 would develop meaning . Thus I believe that a phenomenological reading of this building is the most complete method of analysing it. This analysis gives a way of understanding the experiences that the baths are clearly meant to explore, and when used within an epistemology of experience creates a much more layered structure. It explains how both the design process and the final structure are congruent, while retaining the personalisation of the experience. There is nothing wrong with the analysis of this building as an expression of structuralism, but phenomenology presents a more persuasive and – especially having been there – a more involving 65 one too. To Quote Bachelard “the image comes before thought”

62 63 64 65

Ibid.; p.148 Jonathan A. Hale; Op. Cit.; p.158 Ibid; p.146 Gaston Bachelard; The Poetics of Space; Op. Cit.; p.xx

Bibliography Gaston Bachelard; The Poetics of Space; Beacon Press, Boston, USA; 1994 Gaston Bachelard; Water and Dreams: An Essay on the Imagination of Matter; The Dallas Institute Publications, Dallas, USA; 2006 Henri Bergson; Matter and Memory; Zone Books, New York, USA; 1988 David Chipperfield; Thermal Bath at Vals by Peter Zumthor; AA Files 32; Autumn 1996 Peter Davey; Zumthor the Shaman – Peter Zumthor, Winner of the 1998 Carlsberg Prize for Architecture; The Architectural Review; October 1998; http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m3575/is_n1220_v205/ai_21269556 Jonathan A. Hale; Building Ideas: An Introduction to Architectural Theory; John Wiley & Sons, Chichester, England; 2000 Hotel Therme Vals / Edited by Annalisa Zumthor; Stone and Water: Culture and Events Summer 2006; Anton Schob, Switzerland; June 2006 Hotel Therme Vals / Edited by Annalisa Zumthor; Information and Prices 2006/2007; Anton Schob, Switzerland; 4.0 edition, June 2006 Hans-Joachim Müller, Eckhard Schneider, Peter Zumthor; Buildings and Projects 1986 – 2007; Kunsthaus Bregenz, 29/09/07 - 20/01/08; http://www.kunsthausbregenz.at/ehtml/ewelcome00.htm Juhani Pallasmaa; The Eyes of the Skin: Architecture and the Senses; Wiley-Academy, Chichester, England; 2005 Raymund Ryan; Primal Therapy - Thermal Baths in Vals, Switzerland; The Architectural Review; August 1997; http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m3575/is_n1206_v202/ai_19971778 Peter Zumthor; Atmospheres: Architectural Environments. Surrounding Objects; Birkhauser, Basel, Switzerland; Peter Zumthor; The architecture of the spa complex, part one; Therme Vals, Vals, Switzerland; 2005; http://www.therme-vals.ch/zumthor/index_en.html Peter Zumthor/ essays by Sigrid Hauser and Peter Zumthor, photographs by Hélène Binet; Therme Vals; Sheidegger & Spiess, Zurich, Switzerland; 2007 Peter Zumthor; Thinking Architecture; Birkhauser, Basel, Switzerland; 2005 Peter Zumthor / photographs by Hélène Binet; Works: Buildings and Projects 19791997; Birkhauser, Basel, Switzerland; 1999

Filmography Richard Stone); part 1; part 2; part 3;

Copans; Architecture! Peter Zumthor - Les Thermes De Pierre (The Therme of Europe Images International Arte VidĂŠo; 2001; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w7v-wozHSO8&feature=related http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qwV-tFVTRT8&feature=related http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4HPxczKAYn4&feature=related

http://www.therme-vals.ch/bad/index_en.html# and click on THE VIRTUAL TOUR in the bottom left corner Webliography http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmund_Husserl http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Heidegger http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maurice_Merleau-Ponty http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaston_Bachelard http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structuralism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barthes http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferdinand_de_Saussure http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_L%C3%A9vi-Strauss http://www.valser.ch/de/0_home/index.php http://www.therme-vals.ch/?__locale=en Picture Credits All photographs by Atelier Zumthor Published in Peter Zumthor; Therme Vals and Peter Zumthor; Works: Buildings and Projects 1979-1997 Except for: Stairs, top and bottom p.24 and main pool by Helen Binet Published in Peter Zumthor; Therme Vals and Peter Zumthor; Works: Buildings and Projects 1979-1997 front and roof by Hugh McEwen entrance, changing, sound, untitled, fire and flower by SWANK-E on pushpullbar.com site by unknown