The Secular Retreat, a masterpiece in the UK, designed by Peter Zumthor

The Secular Retreat is the first permanent building in the UK by Swiss architect Peter Zumthor for Living Architecture.

The Secular Retreat by Peter Zumthor. Photograph © Jack Hobhouse/Living Architecture

Peter Zumthor completes a beautiful modern holiday home situated on a South Devon hilltop, one mile from the coast above the small Hamlet of Chivelstone.

A thick slab of concrete over layered-concrete walls and over a long glass corridor a great horizontal composition on the site, framing stunning views across the landscape in all directions. Hand- rammed concrete forms both the interior and exterior spaces, to give the building a mass and scale characteristic of Zumthor’s work.

Zumthor is renowned for his craftsmanship and expertise in the use of materials, which give his buildings an eternal quality. The house is one of the best examples of architectural simplicity, no matter where you look. A great project whose achievement is to make you look somewhere else, that strikes a perfect balance between inside and out.

Surely, the future visitors may not pay attention to so much elegant work develops in the service of the effortless perception, looking the lovely Devonian hills revealed by the glass. However, it takes a lot to design it, a lot of materials, inteligence by engineerss and arduous processes to built and obiusly, a lot of money.

«It has become rare to be able to sit in a house and look out at a beautiful landscape where no trace of another building interrupts the lines of the rolling hills. Quietness, contemplation, pure luxury. I could not resist to try to create this house.»

Peter Zumthor

The house sits in the place of a ruined timber house constructed in the 1940’s. Links to the original site remain, with a small hexagonal shaped walled area made out of layers of concrete block, and the now 20-metre-tall Monterey Pine trees planted to shield the original house.The garden is designed with the South Devon based Rathbone Partnership and comprises the planting of some 5,000 local species of trees and shrubs. Terraces and pathways are made of rough-hewn Somerset Blue Lias stone, set on edge.

The house will accommodate up to ten people in five bedrooms and is formed of two separate bedroom wings which lead from the large central open-plan living space. The design and construction required a series of exacting processes to be undertaken, from the careful placing amongst the existing trees, the orientation on the site to make the best of the views and natural light, to the creation of new gardens and outside areas.

Internally, the continuous ribbons of layered-concrete are set against stone floors, each slab cut to a different size and shape reflecting the raw material sourced directly from a Somerset quarry. Bedrooms are simple in form – a large carved niche within the concrete fabric, timber Pearwood floors leading to full height and width windows, allowing views onto the gardens and the surrounding valleys. Ensuite bathrooms continue this theme, with a combination of stone and rammed concrete. Throughout, the carefully crafted joinery of doors, inset shelves, wardrobes and kitchen furniture, all made from apple and cherry woods, bring a warmth and depth of contrast to the handmade concrete walls. Sofas, chairs, tables and lights all are designed by Zumthor.

Peter Zumthor was awarded the Pritzker Prize in 2009, and the RIBA Gold Medal in 2013. Renowned buildings he designed include the Thermal Baths at Vals in Switzerland, the Bruder Klaus Chapel outside Cologne in Germany, Saint Benedict Chapel in Sumvitg, Switzerland and the Kolumba Museum in Cologne. He is currently working on designs for museums in Basel and Los Angeles, alongside many other commissions. In 2011 he designed the Serpentine Gallery Pavilion, a black painted structure with internal corridors leading to a courtyard that housed a garden designed by Piet Oudolf.

Living Architecture was founded by Alain de Botton in 2006, with the wish to enhance the appreciation of modern architecture, whilst providing the opportunity for an exceptional holiday experience, in a space designed by an outstanding architectural practice.

With Mark Robinson; who had spent a number of years commissioning and working directly with many different architects, they set about creating the houses they have today.

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Peter Zumthor

Peter Zumthor was born on April 26, 1943, the son of a cabinet maker, Oscar Zumthor, in Basel, Switzerland. He trained as a cabinet maker from 1958 to 1962. From 1963-67, he studied at the Kunstgewerbeschule, Vorkurs and Fachklasse with further studies in design at Pratt Institute in New York.

In 1967, he was employed by the Canton of Graubünden (Switzerland) in the Department for the Preservation of Monuments working as a building and planning consultant and architectural analyst of historical villages, in addition to realizing some restorations. He established his own practice in 1979 in Haldenstein, Switzerland where he still works with a small staff of fifteen. Zumthor is married to Annalisa Zumthor-Cuorad. They have three children, all adults, Anna Katharina, Peter Conradin, and Jon Paulin, and two grandchildren.

Since 1996, he has been a professor at the Academy of Architecture, Universitá della Svizzera Italiana, Mendrisio. He has also been a visiting professor at the University of Southern California Institute of Architecture and SCI-ARC in Los Angeles in 1988; at the Technische Universität, Munich in 1989; and at the Graduate School of Design, Harvard University in 1999.

His many awards include the Praemium Imperiale from the Japan Art Association in 2008 as well as the Carlsberg Architecture Prize in Denmark in 1998, and the Mies van der Rohe Award for European Architecture in 1999. In 2006, he received the Thomas Jefferson Foundation Medal in Architecture from the University of Virginia. The American Academy of Arts and Letters bestowed the Arnold W. Brunner Memorial Prize in Architecture in 2008.

In the recent book published by Barrons Educational Series, Inc. titled, Architectura, Elements of Architectural Style, with the distinguished architectural historian from Australia, Professor Miles Lewis, as general editor, the Zumthor’s Thermal Bath building at Vals is described as “a superb example of simple detailing that is used to create highly atmospheric spaces. The design contrasts cool, gray stone walls with the warmth of bronze railings, and light and water are employed to sculpt the spaces. The horizontal joints of the stonework mimic the horizontal lines of the water, and there is a subtle change in the texture of the stone at the waterline. Skylights inserted into narrow slots in the ceiling create a dramatic line of light that accentuates the fluidity of the water. Every detail of the building thus reinforces the importance of the bath on a variety of levels.”

In the book titled Thinking Architecture, first published by Birkhauser in 1998, Zumthor set down in his own words a philosophy of architecture. One sample of his thoughts is as follows: “I believe that architecture today needs to reflect on the tasks and possibilities which are inherently its own. Architecture is not a vehicle or a symbol for things that do not belong to its essence. In a society that celebrates the inessential, architecture can put up a resistance, counteract the waste of forms and meanings, and speak its own language. I believe that the language of architecture is not a question of a specific style. Every building is built for a specific use in a specific place and for a specific society. My buildings try to answer the questions that emerge from these simple facts as precisely and critically as they can.”