Peter Zumthor

Peter Zumthor is a master architect admired by his colleagues around the world for his focused, uncompromising and exceptionally applied work. He has conceived his working method almost as carefully as each of his projects. For 30 years, he has lived in the remote Swiss mountain village of Haldenstein, far from the hustle and bustle of international architecture. There, together with a small team, he creates buildings of great integrity that are not subject to passing fashions. He does not accept most of the commissions that come to him, he only accepts those with which he feels a deep affinity for his programme, and from the moment he accepts them, his dedication is total, supervising the realisation of the project down to the last detail.

His buildings have a commanding presence, but they demonstrate the power of a successful intervention, and show us time and again that modesty in approach and boldness in the overall result are not mutually exclusive. Humility coexists with strength. Although some have described its architecture as unassuming, its buildings masterfully assert their presence, engaging many of our senses, not only sight, but also touch, hearing and smell.

Zumthor has a great ability to create places that are much more than a single building. His architecture expresses respect for the primacy of place, the legacy of a local culture and the valuable lessons of architectural history. The Kolumba Museum in Cologne, for example, is not only an astonishing contemporary work, but also one that fits perfectly with its many layers of history. Here, Zumthor has created a building that emerges from the remains of a bombed church in the most natural and lyrical way, weaving place and memory into an entirely new palimpsest. This has always been the captivating character of this architect's work, from the unique yet universal breath of faith inscribed in the tiny country chapel in the village of Wachendorf in Germany to the mineral mist of the thermal baths at Vals in Switzerland. For him, the role of the architect is not only to build a fixed object, but also to anticipate and choreograph the experience of moving through and around a building.

In Zumthor's skilful hands, as in those of a consummate craftsman, materials from cedar shingles to sandblasted glass are used in a way that celebrates their own unique qualities, all in the service of an architecture of permanence. The same penetrating vision and subtle poetry are also evident in his writings which, like his building stock, have inspired generations of students. He has reaffirmed the indispensable place of architecture in a fragile world by reducing it to the most essential and sumptuous. For all these reasons, Peter Zumthor is the winner of the 2009 Pritzker Architecture Prize.