Peter Zumthor's zero degree
A new realism as absolute creation
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.17979/bac.2025.15..12155Keywords:
Peter Zumthor, zero degree, realism, phenomenology, artAbstract
Peter Zumthor’s work underwent a pivotal shift in the mid-1980s that changed its reason for being. Under the decisive influence of certain contemporary art movements, it turned into what some have called architectural minimalism or, in its most extreme form, the «zero degree» of architecture. Its emergence has been attributed to an architectural reinterpretation of a linguistic degré zéro based in forms and principles of Conceptual art and Minimal art of the 1960s. The evolution of the zero degree that Zumthor explicitly applied in the Topography of Terror in Berlin and the Steilneset Memorial in Vardø suggests that he may have found his zero condition of architecture in earlier roots. A review of the concept and both projects reveals echoes of Malevich’s Suprematism and Russian Constructivism, to approach some of the keys to Zumthor’s transition toward a phenomenological realism.
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