MATERIAL AND PRESENCE.
The architecture of the spa complex. from Peter Zumthor.
The new thermal spa, formally opened in December 1996 and already listed by the Canton Graubünden as a protected building in 1998, is a self-willed construction set into the mountain slope. It replaced the bathing facilities of the hydro hotel (built between 1962 and 1970) which were too cramped and in need of repair. The new separate spa building is built in Valser gneiss. Stone by stone. A massive element set in to the gradient of the slope and dovetailed with the flank of the mountain. The great slabs of the roof are grassed over: sections of flower studded alpine meadow.
The architectonic language of the new spa has nothing to do with the design of the hotel complex built in the sixties. It is more profound underlining the essential in the context of a new interpretation of the constructional challenge; emphasising the special relationship of the new Therme to the primordial forces of nature and the geology of the mountainscape, reacting to the impressive topography of the valley and the position of the warm spring which rises out of the primeval mountain just behind the new spa.
The lengthy projection process culminating in the finished artefact of the spa was initially a process of playful discovery, of a patient and enjoyable quest far beyond the architectonic ideals. The fascination for the mystic qualities of a world of stone within the mountain, for darkness and light, for light reflections on the water or in the steam saturated air, pleasure in the unique acoustics of bubbling water in a world of stone, a feeling for warm stones and naked skin, the ritual of bathing - these notions guided us. The intention to work with these elements, to implement them consciously and to lend them a special form was there from the outset. Only much later, when the preliminary plans were almost finished, did we visit the old baths in Budapest, Istanbul and Bursa and then understood better where these archaic images had come from; archaic images apparently slumbering in a virtually archetypal awareness.
Our spa is no funfair with the latest technical gadgets, water games, jets, sprays and slides, but focuses on the quiet, primary experience of bathing, cleansing, relaxing in the water, the feeling of water all round the body, at various temperatures and in various settings, physical contact with primordial stone.