“we are all brilliant”
Thinking/Making Architecture with Peter Zumthor (link)
Over a decade ago, a good friend sent me a link to this interview of Peter Zumthor. Zumthor was hugely influential to me as a design student and is one of my favorite Architects. I knew nothing about him personally until this interview, but I was thrilled by his candor and directness in responding to academic questions about his work. In this excerpt, he (brutally but rightfully) shuts down a young designer for committing that common sin of conducting an interview as a disguise to tell your subject what you think.
“NH Ok, I would say that the model you had in your book atmospheres of the Bruder Klaus Chapel with the light falling down and the reflection in the pool of water, I would say it was a demonstration of both process and atmosphere, is that what you were aiming for in that model?
PZ I can say yes, see I can tell you something, your questions, you make bad questions, they are full of pre-assumptions, you know. There is this and this and this, I thought this, this and this and my teachers thought this, this and this! God Damit! Make a simple question. What does this image do, you don’t have to tell me what you think or what this person thinks, this is bad questions, good questions leave everything open to me and I can answer how I want.
I am sorry, they are sort of like closed questions, so you don’t learn, you get people mad, isn’t it like that, how I thought it was, how brilliant that I am!
In the future don’t do this have the people show you how brilliant they are because everyone knows we are all brilliant and that you understood already everything.
Because you are brilliant, we are all brilliant (laughs…)
You see this model (PZ points to a model in the room…) we try to see this looks, is it working, if the light comes and so on. Then we look at it and think hey this looks great lets do it! It’s very simple.
Shorten your questions!
And this gem:
“PZ I think for me these questions are too academic. (laughs…) For me they are not that interesting, because I am a passionate architect. I love buildings, process; whatever helps me to make the building I do. I would fly through the air or whatever! I want the building so I don’t care what I have to do. Usually my Mother or everyone with common sense will say there is a convention of sheet music, so people can play the ideas of Mozart, because there is a convention of these notes and that’s the same how we execute drawings. There is a convention, that if I make a proper working drawing or execution drawing that everyone in the world can read it. There (laughs…)”