The bedrooms of Secular
Retreat are niches carved
into its thick concrete core
(opposite), separated from
the Devon landscape only by
large panels of pristine
triple-glazing, with timber
floors of warm pearwood
while apple and cherry wood
are used for doors and
shelves. The son of a
cabinet-maker, Zumthor
designed all the furniture,
including the seating
upholstered in purple fabric
and camel-hued leather
nitial sketches were rudimentary,
organic in their delineation and primal
in their expression. Solid, rough-hewn
pieces of stone were assembled,
overlapping, on what was modelled as an
uncared-for terrain, strewn with moss,
pebbles and twigs. Reminiscent of Anne
Holtrop and Ensamble Studio's casting
experiments, where man-made elements
emerge out of moulds carved in the earth,
Peter Zumthor's early proposal for Living
Architecture was at the time glibly
interpreted by Alain de Botton as
suggestive of a 'prehistoric catastrophe'.
After 10 years in the making, the
Swiss architect's first UK commission is
finished, and it looks nothing like a
prehistoric catastrophe. Lines have been
straightened, matter compacted into
vertical walls, and the house sits on
a pristine piece of landscaped English
countryside buffeted by westerly gales,
overlooking south Devon's rolling hills of
gr een. It is also officially the last property
to be rented out to holiday-goers by Living
Architecture, the final piece in de Botton's
collection of habitable artefacts.
In the time it took to scale do·wn, simplify
and eventually build the revised project,
Zumthor completed another, more modest,
structure on British soil - once it was
publicly announced that he was working
on his first project in the UK, Bans Ulrich
Obrist and Julia Peyton-Jones swiftly
invited him to design the 2011 Serpentine
Pavilion in Hyde Park.
Living Architecture arose out of 'a crisis'
in de Botton's writing. Published just a few
years earlier, his A1·ohiteotu1·e of Happiness
had been well-received by the general public
(the book even had its own moment in the
spotlight, a favourite read of Joseph Gordon-
Levitt's character in 500 Days of Summe1·,
supposedly adding credibility to the
protagonist's professional endeavours),
but de Botton professed that a book
'doesn't change the world' - but large,
built interventions might.
Changing the world might sound
overambitious, but there is something to be
said about the importance of 'experiencing'
architecture. Of pushing doors open, walking
into and looking out of it. Of '''itnessing the
passing of time, the moving of shadows and
the changing colours of light bouncing off'
walls. Some buildings, and those by the
Swiss master more so than most others,
need to be smelled, and stroked,
and savoured slowly.
As Zumthor himself' likes to underline,
he is not interested in doing buildings
'for a quick return'. The simplified, revised
plan is described summarily as 'block, block,
and a roof', but the Devon house has kept
the early proposal's ingrained qualities.
Horizontality prevails, the roof's heavy
cantilevering slabs of white concrete