The most famous building by architect Peter Zumthor, who won this year's Pritzker Prize, is the spa in Vals, Switzerland. EMMA CULLINANwent for a dip
ARCHITECTS WILL stay anywhere and put up with practically all that is thrown at them when they visit iconic buildings. In Le Corbusier’s monastery at La Tourette in the south of France, for instance, visitors stay in tiny concrete rooms that cocoon you.
It’s a harsh womb but the proportions have been carefully calculated to conform to Corb’s Modular Man and resonate with humans. Meals, served in the refectory, are basic and wholesome and the whole experience is worthy of a pilgrimage.
It is something of a pilgrimage up to architect Peter Zumthor’s most famous building, the spa in Vals – far, far up a Swiss Alpine valley – which is run by his wife Annalisa Zumthor-Cuorad.
While the road is Swiss-smooth in the most part, it gets pitted and thin in places and is bordered on one side by rock faces dripping with long icicles and, on the other, a drop to the valley floor (fun for passengers in a left-hand-drive hire car on the way up).
This all feels suitably pilgrim-like – especially for those who make the ascent in the local bus. You imagine – having trekked up this rough route to the village of Vals at a dead-end in the valley – that you will arrive at a place that is austere and remote.
But Vals is large. Find spa water in your locality and the people will come. The town core comprises ancient wooden chalets standing testament to the fact that people trekked up and settled here long before it was relatively easy.
Having expected Zumthor’s hotel to be an architectural masterpiece it is somewhat embarrassing to arrive at a neon-clad 1960s building but this is because Zumthor was commissioned to revamp the old building and he had to concentrate on the internals (although he created an extension with a façade that faces down onto the village).
Zumthor’s been doing up this former clutch of resort buildings bit by bit since the early 1990s, starting with the spa (completed in 1996). The ongoing nature of the hotel project led to the rooms Zumthor designed being called Temporaries and now that that they are finished they retain that name: a metaphor for existence perhaps. Our room is warm white – including the floor – which the cleaning staff must find a challenge.
At first we feel like intruders but soon the space is our own. The white Bibendum chair adds an Irish touch and should we fail to recognise the composers behind the other furniture in the room – such as the Jacobsen lamp or the Zumthor-designed bed and black glossy fridge – we can collect a list of who designed everything in the room at reception (and buy most of it in a nearby shop).
The view is all white too; through the glass wall and across the balcony, making us feel at one with nature.
Luck is with us today because the spa is open to hotel guests from 10.30pm until midnight (on Wednesdays, Thursdays and Sundays). The proviso is that you have to keep quiet. The hushed hoards add to the cathedral-like atmosphere of the cavernous baths lined with concrete and local Valser quartzite stone – from the horizontal, timber-like bars on the walls to the quartzite floor that is naturally grippy and soulful to pad about on.
Unlike the blingy, tinny spas we’ve become used to – where you have to be grateful for the chance to lie in a frothy plastic bath in a small room untroubled by daylight – the Vals experience is truly a temple to bathing. Much of that is down to the total immersion in large rooms filled with water.
The spa hinges on a central indoor pool lit by strips of daylight beaming in through slits in the cantilevered concrete ceiling and on a giant outdoor pool that is so hot it makes sitting out among the mountains (sometimes being snowed on) a warming experience.
There are other pools which you have to discover yourself by walking into darkened doorways and turning corners. On silent-guest night the place is heaving with people and each new pool room you discover is already lined with bathers. The night gloom happily hides any gaps in your depilatory regime. Surely many of them are architects (many still wearing their stylish rimless glasses) surprised to be experiencing such indulgences. Despite its humanity, the spa is actually rather stark and shows just what natural materials, lashings of water and care over the design can achieve.
All the pools contain ledges and steps on which to wallow and climb about on. Such is the sensory nature of it all that there is a whole lot of loving going on. There are many nooks in the outdoor pool but should you venture into one – in the dark – you are likely to find bodies slithering against each other in aquatic grips. Many people carry their partners around the pool, lying prone just atop the water. It takes nearly two hours for boredom to finally set in – beating my usual spa record tenfold – what with the clambering about, swimming and endless moving from pool to pool.
I drew the line at the ice bath which was no problem because they are not bossy here; they tell you to do what you feel like, but I couldn’t resist lying on a pile of snow that was sitting by the outdoor pool and admit to a frisson at the fizzy heat it engendered when I leapt back into the warm water.
There’s also a small music pool that sits in a tower; a supersonic power shower; a fountain from which to sip spa water; a pool that is almost too hot to handle and a scented flower pool with petals swirling about beneath the water. This comes with gurgling, crashing noises that taps into something in humans. Perched on a ledge, hugging my knees beneath the water (easier that it is in air) and gazing at the spinning flora I feel profound peace. You hear that spas are meant to relax you but I’ve never reached anything like these depths.
Perhaps it’s because it’s nearly midnight and I’ve been up and active since 7.30am but now, sitting here, nothing moves me until I begin to get cold and head for the piping hot room.
As I say, architects will take whatever comes when they visit must-see buildings but don’t let anyone try to persuade you that a trip to Vals is purely business.
The Pritzker Prize was set up by the Pritzker family in the US in 1979 to recognise the achievement of a living architect.
The spa is at: www.therme-vals.ch
