Brother Claus Field Chapel, near Cologne, Germany: Peter Zumthor
"The world with its many people, each one a singularity, each group of different experiences revealing the nature of the human in varied aspects, is full of the possibility of more richly sensing human agreements from which new architecture will come. The world cannot be expected to come from the exercice of present technology alone to find the realms of new expression. I believe that technology should be inspired. A good plan demands it.
A word about Silence and Light. A building being built is not yet in servitude. It is so anxious to be that no grass can grow under its feet, so high is the spirit of wanting to be. When it is in service and finished, the building wants to say, "Look, I want to tell you about the way I was made". Nobody listens. Everybody is busy going from room to room.
But when the building is a ruin and free of servitude, the spirit emerges telling of the marvel that a building was made.
(...) We are simply extending what happened long ago; the beggining may be considered the most marvelous without precedent, yet its making was as sure as life.
Light is the material life. The mountains, the streams, the atmosphere are spent light.
Material, nonconscious, moving to desire; a desire to express, conscious moving from shadow to light, meeting at an aura, a threshold where the will senses the possible. The first feeling was of beauty, the first sense was of harmony, of humanity undefinable, unmeasurable, and measurable material, the maker of all things.
At the threshold, the crossing of Silence and Light, lies the sanctuary of art, the only language of humanity. It is the Treasure of the Shadows, lying in that ambiance: Light to Silence, Silence to Light. Whatever is made of light casts a shadow. Light, the giver of presence, casts its shadow, which belongs to light. What is made belongs to light and to desire.
(...) Desire is the thing not made, the roots of the will to live."
Louis Kahn
