Roman public baths in Bath, England. The entire structure above the level of the pillar bases is a later reconstruction.

Virtual Historical Reconstruction of the Roman Baths in Weißenburg, Germany, using data from laser scan technology

In ancient Rome, thermae (from Greek thermos, "hot") and balnea (Greek βαλανείον, balaneion) were facilities for bathing. Thermae usually refers to the large imperial bath complexes, while balneae were smaller-scale facilities, public or private, that existed in great numbers throughout Rome.^[1]

Most Roman cities had at least one, if not many, such buildings, which were centers not only for bathing, but socializing. Roman bath-houses were also provided for private villas, town houses, and forts. They were supplied with water from an adjacent river or stream, or more normally, by an aqueduct. The water could be heated from a log fire before being channeled into the hot bathing rooms. The design of baths is discussed by Vitruvius in De Architectura.

Terminology[link]

Thermae, balneae, balineae, balneum and balineum are all commonly translated as "bath" or "baths". Later usage of the terms loses the distinctions made by earlier authors.

Balneum or balineum, derived from the Greek βαλανείον^[3] signifies, in its primary sense, a bath or bathing-vessel, such as most persons of any consequence amongst the Romans possessed in their own houses,^[4] and hence the chamber which contained the bath,^[5] which is also the proper translation of the word balnearium. The diminutive balneolum is adopted by Seneca^[6] to designate the bathroom of Scipio, in the villa at Liternum, and is expressly used to characterise the modesty of republican manners as compared with the luxury of his own times. But when the baths of private individuals became more sumptuous, and comprised many rooms, instead of the one small chamber described by Seneca, the plural balnea or balinea was adopted, which still, in correct language, had reference only to the baths of private persons. Thus Cicero terms the baths at the villa of his brother Quintus^[7] balnearia. Balneae and balineae, which according to Varro^[8] have no singular number, were the public baths. But this accuracy of diction is neglected by many of the subsequent writers, and particularly by the poets, amongst whom balnea is not uncommonly used in the plural number to signify the public baths, since the word balneae could not be introduced in an hexameter verse. Pliny also, in the same sentence, makes use of the neuter plural balnea for public, and of balneum for a private bath.^[9]

Thermae (which comes from the Greek adjective thermos, hot) meant properly warm springs, or baths of warm water; but came to be applied to those magnificent edifices which grew up under the empire, in place of the simple balneae of the republic, and which comprised within their range of buildings all the appurtenances belonging to the Greek gymnasia, as well as a regular establishment appropriated for bathing.^[10] Writers, however, use these terms without distinction. Thus the baths erected by Claudius Etruscus, the freedman of the Emperor Claudius, are styled by Statius^[11] balnea, and by Martial^[12] Etrusci thermulae. In an epigram by Martial^[13]—subice balneum thermis—the terms are not applied to the whole building, but to two different chambers in the same edifice.

Building layout[link]

Plan of the Old Baths at Pompeii
(click to enlarge)

A public bath was built around three principal rooms: the caldarium (hot bath), the tepidarium (warm bath) and the frigidarium (cold bath). Some thermae also featured steam baths: the sudatorium, a moist steam bath, and the laconicum, a dry steam bath much like a modern sauna.

By way of illustration, this article will describe the layout of Pompeii's Old Baths adjoining the forum, which are among some of the best-preserved Roman baths. The references are to the floor plan pictured to the right.^[14]

The whole building comprises a double set of baths, one for men and the other for women. It has six different entrances from the street, one of which (b) gives admission to the smaller women's set only. Five other entrances lead to the men's department, of which two (c and c2), communicate directly with the furnaces, and the other three (a3, a2, a) with the bathing apartments.

Atrium[link]

Passing through the principal entrance, a, which is removed from the street by a narrow footway surrounding the building and after descending three steps, the bather finds a small chamber on his left (x) which contained a water closet (latrina), and proceeds into a covered portico (g, g), which ran round three sides of an open court (atrium, A). These together formed the vestibule of the baths (vestibulum balnearum^[15]), in which the servants waited.

Use of the atrium[link]

This atrium was the exercise ground for the young men, or perhaps served as a promenade for visitors to the baths. Within this court the keeper of the baths (balneator), who exacted the quadrans paid by each visitor, was also stationed. The room f, which runs back from the portico, might have been appropriated to him; but most probably it was an oecus or exedra, for the convenience of the better classes while awaiting the return of their acquaintances from the interior. In this court, advertisements for the theatre, or other announcements of general interest, were posted up, one of which, announcing a gladiatorial show, still remains. At the sides of the entrance were seats (scholae).

Apodyterium and frigidarium[link]

The apodyterium

The frigidarium

A passage (e) leads into the apodyterium (B), a room for undressing in which all visitors must have met before entering the baths proper. Here, the bathers removed their clothing, which was taken in charge by slaves known as capsarii, notorious in ancient times for their dishonesty.^[16] The apodyterium was a spacious chamber, with stone seats along two sides of the wall (h, h). Holes are still visible on the walls, and probably mark the places where the pegs for the bathers' clothes were set. The chamber was lighted by a glass window, and had six doors. One of these led to the tepidarium (D) and another to the frigidarium (C), with its cold plunge-bath (referred to as loutron, natatio, natatorium, piscina, baptisterium or puteus; the terms "natatio" and "natatorium" suggest that some of those baths were also swimming pools). The bath in this chamber is of white marble, approached by two marble steps.

Tepidarium[link]

The tepidarium

From the frigidarium the bather who wished to go through the warm bath and sweating process entered the tepidarium (D). It did not contain water either at Pompeii or at the baths of Hippias, but was merely heated with warm air of an agreeable temperature, in order to prepare the body for the great heat of the vapour and warm baths, and, upon returning, to prevent a too-sudden transition to the open air. In the baths at Pompeii this chamber also served as an apodyterium for those who took the warm bath. The walls feature a number of separate compartments or recesses for receiving the garments when taken off. The compartments are divided from each other by figures of the kind called Atlantes or Telamones, which project from the walls and support a rich cornice above them.

Three bronze benches were also found in the room, which was heated as well by its contignity to the hypocaust of the adjoining chamber, as by a brazier of bronze (foculus), in which the charcoal ashes were still remaining when the excavation was made. Sitting and perspiring beside such a brazier was called ad flammam sudare.^[17]

Use of the tepidarium[link]

The tepidarium is generally the most highly ornamented room in baths. It was merely a room to sit in and be anointed in. In the Old Baths at Pompeii the floor is mosaic, the arched ceiling adorned with stucco and painting on a coloured ground, the walls red.

Anointing was performed by slaves called unctores and aliptae. It sometimes took place before going to the hot bath, and sometimes after the cold bath, before putting on the clothes, in order to check the perspiration.^[18] Some baths had a special room (destrictarium or unctorium) for this purpose.

Caldarium[link]

The caldarium, as it is in the Old Baths

From the tepidarium a door opened into the caldarium (E), whose mosaic floor was directly above the furnace or hypocaust. Its walls also were hollow, forming a great flue filled with heated air. At one end was a round basin (labrum), and at the other a quadrangular bathingplace (puelos, alveus, solium, calida piscina), approached from the platform (schola) by steps. The labrum held cold water, for pouring upon the bather's head before he left the room. These basins are of marble in the Old Baths, but we hear of alvei of solid silver.^[19] Because of the great heat of the room, the caldarium was but slightly ornamented.

Laconicum[link]

The Old Baths have no laconicum, which was a chamber still hotter than the caldarium, and used simply as a sweating-room, having no bath. It was said to have been introduced at Rome by Agrippa^[20] and was also called sudatorium and assa.

Service areas[link]

A three-tiered water boiler (miliarium)

The apodyterium has a passage (q) communicating with the mouth of the furnace (r), called praefurnium or propigneum; and, passing down that passage, we reach the chamber M, into which the praefurnium projects, and which is entered from the street at c. It was assigned to the fornacatores, or persons in charge of the fires. Of its two staircases, one leads to the roof of the baths, and one to the boilers containing the water.

There were three boilers, one of which (caldarium vas) held the hot water; a second, the tepid (tepidarium); and the third, the cold (frigidarium). The warm water was turned into the warm bath by a pipe through the wall, marked on the plan. Underneath the hot chamber was set the circular furnace d, of more than 7 ft. in diameter, which heated the water and poured hot air into the hollow cells of the hypocaustum. It passed from the furnace under the first and last of the caldrons by two flues, which are marked on the plan. The boiler containing hot water was placed immediately over the furnace; and, as the water was drawn out from there, it was supplied from the next, the tepidarium, which was raised a little higher and stood a little way off from the furnace. It was already considerably heated from its contiguity to the furnace and the hypocaust below it, so that it supplied the deficiency of the former without materially diminishing its temperature; and the vacuum in this last was again filled up from the farthest removed, which contained the cold water received directly from the square reservoir seen behind them. The boilers themselves no longer remain, but the impressions which they have left in the mortar in which they were imbedded are clearly visible, and enable us to determine their respective positions and dimensions. Such coppers or boilers appear to have been called miliaria, from their similarity of shape to a milestone.^[21]

Behind the boilers, another corridor leads into the court or atrium (K) appropriated to the servants of the bath.

Women's bath[link]

The women's bath

The adjoining, smaller set of baths were assigned to the women. The entrance is by the door b, which conducts into a small vestibule (m) and from there into the apodyterium (H), which, like the one in the men's bath, has a seat (pulvinus, gradus) on either side built up against the wall. This opens upon a cold bath (J), answering to the natatio of the men's set, but of much smaller dimensions. There are four steps on the inside to descend into it.

Opposite to the door of entrance into the apodyterium is another doorway which leads to the tepidarium (G), which also communicates with the thermal chamber (F), on one side of which is a warm bath in a square recess, and at the farther extremity the labrum. The floor of this chamber is suspended, and its walls perforated for flues, like the corresponding one in the men's baths. The tepidarium in the women's baths had no brazier, but it had a hanging or suspended floor.

Purpose[link]

The baths often included, aside from the three main rooms listed above, a palaestra, or outdoor gymnasium where men would engage in various ball games and exercises. There, among other things, weights were lifted and the discus thrown. Men would oil themselves (as soap was still a luxury good and thus not widely available), shower,^{[citation needed]} and remove the excess with a strigil (cf. the well known Apoxyomenus of Lysippus from the Vatican Museum). Often wealthy bathers would bring a capsarius, a slave that carried his master's towels, oils, and strigils to the baths and then watched over them once in the baths, as thieves and pickpockets were known to frequent the baths.

The changing room was known as the apodyterium (Greek apodyterion, apo + duo "to take off" here of clothing).

Cultural significance[link]

In many ways, baths were the ancient Roman equivalent of community centers. Because the bathing process took so long, conversation was necessary. Many Romans would use the baths as a place to invite their friends to dinner parties, and many politicians would go to the baths to convince fellow Romans to join their causes. The thermae had many attributes in addition to the baths. There were libraries, rooms for poetry readings, and places to buy and eat food. The modern equivalent would be a combination of a library, art gallery, mall, restaurant, gym, and spa.^[22]

The Romans believed that good health came from bathing, eating, massages, and exercise. The baths, therefore, had all of these things in abundance. Since some citizens would be bathing multiple times a week, Roman society was surprisingly clean. ^[23]

When asked by a foreigner why he bathed once a day, a Roman emperor is said to have replied "Because I do not have the time to bathe twice a day."^[24]

Emperors often built baths to gain favor for themselves and to create a lasting monument of their generosity. If a rich Roman wished to gain the favor of the people, he might arrange for a free admission day in his name. For example, a senator hoping to become a Tribune might pay all admission fees at a particular bath on his birthday to become well known to the people of the area.

Location[link]

Baths sprung up all over the empire. Where natural hot springs existed (as in Bath, England, Băile Herculane, Romania or Serdica, Bulgaria) thermae were built around them. Alternatively, a system of hypocausta (Greek hypocauston < hypo "below" + kaio "to burn") were utilized to heat the piped water from a furnace (praefurnium).

Remains of Roman public baths[link]

A number of Roman public baths survive, either as ruins or in varying degrees of conservation. Among the more notable are the Roman baths of Bath in England as well as the Baths of Caracalla, of Diocletian, of Titus, of Trajan in Rome and the baths of Varna.^[25]

Other thermae attractions[link]

Visitors to the bath house could also play on the playing grounds, look at books from the libraries, visit the exhibition halls, and admire the covered walkways with fountains and landscaped gardens. They could go to the barber for a trim, the beautician for a relaxing afternoon, the gym for a quick workout, or get a snack.^[26]

See also[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Ancient Roman thermae

• Aqueducts
• Roman culture
• Roman aqueducts
• Roman architecture
• Roman engineering
• Roman technology
• Spa town
• Hygiene
• Diocletian window (thermal window)
• Sauna
• Turkish Bath
• Onsen
• History of sanitation

References[link]

• This article incorporates text by Anthony Rich from the article "Balneae" in the public domain Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities by William Smith (1870), p. 183 et seq.
• This article incorporates text from the article "Balneae" in the public domain Harpers Dictionary of Classical Antiquities by Harry Thurston Peck (1898).
• Aaland, Mikkel (May 15, 1998). "Mass Bathing: The Roman BaInea and Thermae". Cyber-Bohemia. http://www.cyberbohemia.com/Pages/massbathing.htm. Retrieved August 2, 2006. 

Footnotes[link]

External links[link]

• William Smith Roman Baths (Balneae) from "A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities", pub. John Murray, London, 1875.
• ThermeMuseum (Museum of the Thermae) in Heerlen
• Traianus – Technical investigation of Roman public works
• Roman Bath: a day at the baths An interactive site using the Baths of Caracalla as an example
• Barbara F. McManus Roman baths and bathing
• 3d reconstruction of a roman baths Limes in Austria
• Roman Baths of Weissenburg Digital Media Archive (creative commons-licensed photos, laser scans, panoramas) with data from a City of Weissenburg/CyArk research partnership
• The so-called Victorian Turkish bath was actually a 19th century version of the Roman bath, and was much closer to it than it was to the Islamic hammam (which is far more humid).

Peter Zumthor
Therme Vals, Switzerland
Born	(1943-04-26) 26 April 1943 (age 69) Basel, Switzerland
Nationality	Swiss
Awards	Pritzker Prize (2009)
Work
Buildings	Therme Vals Kunsthaus Bregenz

Peter Zumthor (born 26 April 1943) is a Swiss architect and winner of the 2009 Pritzker Prize.

Early life[link]

Zumthor was born in Basel, the son of a cabinet-maker. He apprenticed to a carpenter in 1958 and studied at the Kunstgewerbeschule in his native city starting in 1963.

In 1966, Zumthor studied industrial design and architecture as an exchange student at Pratt Institute in New York. In 1968, he became conservationist architect for the Department for the Preservation of Monuments of the canton of Graubünden. This work on historic restoration projects gave him a further understanding of construction and the qualities of different rustic building materials. As his practice developed, Zumthor was able to incorporate his knowledge of materials into Modernist construction and detailing. His buildings explore the tactile and sensory qualities of spaces and materials while retaining a minimalist feel.

Career[link]

Zumthor founded his own firm in 1979. His practice grew quickly and he accepted more international projects.

Zumthor has taught at Southern California Institute of Architecture in Los Angeles (1988), the Technical University of Munich (1989), Tulane University (1992), and the Harvard Graduate School of Design (1999). Since 1996, he is professor at the Accademia di Architettura di Mendrisio

His best known projects are the Kunsthaus Bregenz (1997), a shimmering glass and concrete cube that overlooks Lake Constance (Bodensee) in Austria; the cave-like thermal baths in Vals, Switzerland (1999); the Swiss Pavilion for Expo 2000 in Hannover, an all-timber structure intended to be recycled after the event; the Kolumba Diocesan Museum (2007), in Cologne; and the Bruder Klaus Field Chapel, on a farm near Wachendorf.

In 1993 Zumthor won the competition for a museum and documentation center on the horrors of Nazism to be built on the site of Gestapo headquarters in Berlin. Mr. Zumthor’s submission called for an extended three-story building with a framework consisting of concrete rods. The project, called the Topography of Terror, was partly built and then abandoned when the government decided not to go ahead for financial reasons. The unfinished building was demolished in 2004.^[1] In 1999, Zumthor was selected as the only foreign architect to participate in Norway’s National Tourist Routes Project, with two projects, the Memorial in Memory of the Victims of the Witch Trials in Varanger, a collaboration with Louise Bourgeois (completed in 2010), and a rest area/museum on the site of an abandoned zinc mine.^[2]

For the Dia Art Foundation in Beacon, New York, Zumthor designed a gallery that was to house the “360° I Ching” sculpture by Walter de Maria; though the project was never completed. Zumthor is the only foreign architect to participate, with two projects, the Memorial in Memory of the Victims of the Witch Trials in Varanger, a collaboration with Louise Bourgeois (to be completed in June), and a rest area/museum on the site of an abandoned zinc mine (completion date 2011). In November 2009, it was revealed that Zumthor is working on a major redesign for the campus of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.^[3] Recently, he turned down an opportunity to consider a new library for Magdalen College, Oxford. He was selected to design the Serpentine Gallery's annual summer pavilion with designer Piet Oudolf in 2011.^[4]

Currently, Zumthor works out of his small studio with around 30 employees, in Haldenstein, near the city of Chur, in Switzerland.^[5]

Recognition[link]

In 1994, he was elected to the Akademie der Künste in Berlin. In 1996, he was made an honorary member of the Bund Deutscher Architekten (BDA). In 1998, Zumthor received the Carlsberg Architecture Prize for his designs of the Kunsthaus Bregenz in Bregenz, Austria and the Thermal Baths at Vals, Switzerland (see below). He won the Mies van der Rohe Award for European Architecture in 1999. Recently, he was awarded Praemium Imperiale in (2008) and the Pritzker Architecture Prize (2009).

Zumthor and Heidegger[link]

The Vals spa—famed among architects for its evocative sequence of spaces and exquisite construction details—presents intriguing correspondences between Heidegger’s writing and Zumthor’s architecture. Writing in his architectural manifesto, Thinking Architecture, Zumthor mirrors Heidegger’s celebration of experience and emotion as measuring tools. A chapter entitled “A way of looking at things” begins by describing a door handle:

^[6]

I used to take hold of it when I went into my aunt’s garden. That door handle still seems to me like a special sign of entry into a world of different moods and smells. I remember the sound of gravel under my feet, the soft gleam of waxed oak staircase. I can hear the heavy front door closing behind me as I walk along the dark corridor and enter the kitchen[...].(1998:9)

Zumthor always emphasises the sensory aspects of the architectural experience. To him, the physicality of materials can involve an individual with the world, evoking experiences and texturing horizons of place through memory. He recalls places he once measured out at his aunt’s house through their sensual qualities. Zumthor’s Vals spa recounts the thinking he describes in his essay, making appeals to all the senses. The architect choreographs materials according to their evocative qualities. Flamed and polished stone, chrome, brass, leather and velvet were deployed with care to enhance the inhabitant’s sense of embodiment when clothed and naked. The touch, smell, and perhaps even taste of these materials were orchestrated obsessively. The theatricality of steaming and bubbling water was enhanced by natural and artificial light, with murky darkness composed as intensely as light. Materials were crafted and joined to enhance or suppress their apparent mass. Their sensory potential was relentlessly exploited with these tactics, Zumthor aimed to celebrate the liturgy of bathing by evoking emotions.

Literature[link]

Zumthor's work is largely unpublished in part because of his philosophical belief that architecture must be experienced first hand.^[7] His published written work is mostly narrative and phenomenological.

“Thinking Architecture”

In this book Peter Zumthor expresses his motivation in designing buildings that speak to our feelings and understanding in so many ways and that possess a powerful and unmistakable presence and personality. The book is illustrated throughout with color photographs by Laura Padgett of Zumthor's new home and studio in Haldenstein.

“To me, buildings can have a beautiful silence that I associate with attributes such as composure, self-evidence, durability, presence, and integrity, and with warmth and sensuousness as well; a building that is being itself, being a building, not representing anything, just being. The sense that I try to instil into materials is beyond all rules of composition, and their tangibility, smell, and acoustic qualities are merely elements of the language we are obliged to use. Sense emerges when I succeed in bringing out the specific meanings of certain materials in my buildings, meanings that can only be perceived in just this way in this one building. When I concentrate on a specific site or place for which I am going to design a building, when I try to plumb its depths, its form, its history, and its sensuous qualities, images of other places start to invade this process of precise observation: images of places I know and that once impressed me, images of ordinary or special places places that I carry with me as inner visions of specific moods and qualities; images of architectural situations, which emanate from the world of art, or films, theater or literature.”

“Atmospheres”

Atmospheres is a poetics of architecture and a window into Peter Zumthor's personal sources of inspiration. In nine short, illustrated chapters framed as a process of self-observation, Peter Zumthor describes what he has on his mind as he sets about creating the atmosphere of his houses. Images of spaces and buildings that affect him are every bit as important as particular pieces of music or books that inspire him. From the composition and “presence” of the materials to the handling of proportions and the effect of light, this poetics of architecture enables the reader to recapitulate what really matters in the process of house design. In conclusion, Peter Zumthor has described what really constitutes an architectural atmosphere as "this singular density and mood, this feeling of presence, well-being, harmony, beauty...under whose spell I experience what I otherwise would not experience in precisely this way."

“Peter Zumthor Therme Vals” This is the only book-length study of this singular building, features the architect’s own original sketches and plans for its design as well as Hélène Binet’s striking photographs of the structure. Architectural scholar Sigrid Hauser contributes an essay on such topics as “Artemis/Diana,” “Baptism,” “Mikvah,” and “Spring”—drawing out the connections between the elemental nature of the spa and mythology, bathing, and purity.

Annotations by Peter Zumthor on his design concept and the building process elucidate the structure’s symbiotic relationship to its natural surroundings, revealing, for example, why he insisted on using locally quarried stone. Therme Vals’s scenic design elements, and Zumthor’s contributions to this book, reflect the architect’s commitment to the essential and his disdain for needless architectural flourishes. [1]

“Seeing Zumthor” Seeing Zumthor represents a unique collaboration between Zumthor and Swiss photographer Hans Danuser, containing Danuser’s images of buildings created by Zumthor. More than twenty years ago, in a milestone event of twentieth-century architectural photography, Danuser photographed, at Zumthor’s invitation, two buildings: the protective structure built for archaeological excavations in Chur and St. Benedict’s Chapel in Sumvitg. When first shown in exhibition, those photos ignited a lively debate that has been revived with a recent exhibition of Danuser’s photographs of Zumthor’s most famous work, the spa at Therme Vals. Seeing Zumthor collects these three important series of Danuser’s pictures and includes essays by leading art historians exploring the relationship between the two seemingly different disciplines or architecture and photography. [2]

Principal works[link]

• 1983 Elementary school Churwalden, Churwalden, Graubünden, Switzerland.
• 1983 House Räth, Haldenstein, Graubünden, Switzerland.
• 1986 Shelters for Roman archaeological site, Chur, Graubünden, Switzerland.
• 1986 Atelier Zumthor, Haldenstein, Graubünden, Switzerland.
• 1989 Saint Benedict Chapel, Sumvitg, Graubünden, Switzerland.
• 1990 Art Museum Chur, Graubünden, Switzerland.
• 1993 Residential home for the elderly, Masans, Chur, Graubünden, Switzerland.
• 1994 Gugalun House, Versam, Graubünden, Switzerland.
• 1996 Spittelhof housing, Biel-Benken, Basel, Switzerland.
• 1996 Therme Vals, Vals, Graubünden, Switzerland.
• 1997 Art Museum Bregenz, Bregenz, Vorarlberg, Austria.
• 1997 Topography of Terror, International Exhibition and Documentation Centre, Berlin, Germany, partly built, abandoned, demolished in 2004.
• 1997-2000 Swiss Pavilion EXPO 2000, Hannover, Germany.
• 1997 Villa in Küsnacht am Zürichsee Küsnacht, Switzerland.
• 1997 Lichtforum Zumtobel Staff, Zürich, Switzerland.
• 1999 Cloud Rock Wilderness Lodge, Moab, Utah, United States.
• 2007 Bruder Klaus Kapelle, Mechernich-Wachendorf, Germany.
• 2007 Kolumba - Erzbischöfliches Diözesanmuseum, Cologne (Köln), Germany.
• 2011 Steilneset Memorial, Vardø, Norway^[8]

• 

  Kunsthaus Bregenz

• 

  View of glass facade of Kunsthaus Bregenz

• 

  Therme Vals

• 

  St. Benedict Chapel

• 

  Bruder Klaus Chapel

• 

  Bruder Klaus Chapel

• 

  Kolumba - Erzbischöfliches Diözesanmuseum

• 

  Kolumba - Diözesanmuseum (interior)

Awards[link]

• 1987 Auszeichnung guter Bauten im Kanton Graubüunden, Switzerland.
• 1989 Heinrich Tessenow medal, Technische Universität Hannover, Germany.
• 1991 Gulam, European wiid-glue prize.
• 1992 Internationaler Architekturpreis für Neues Bauen in den Alpen, Graubünden, Switzerland.
• 1993 Best Building 1993 award from Swiss tc's '10 vor '10, Graubünden, Switzerland.
• 1994 Auszeichnung guter Bauten im Kanton Graubüunden, Switzerland.
• 1995 International Prize for Stone Architecture, Fiera di Verona, Italy.
• 1995 Internationaler Architekturpreis für Neues Bauen in den Alpen, Graubünden, Switzerland.
• 1996 Erich-Schelling-Preis für Architektur, Erich-Schelling-Stiftung, Germany.
• 1998 European Union Prize for Contemporary Architecture (aka Mies van der Rohe Award) for Bregenz Art Museum.
• 1998 Carlsberg Architectural Prize.
• 2006 Spirit of Nature Wood Architecture Award.
• 2006 Thomas Jefferson Foundation Medal in Architecture, University of Virginia.
• 2008 Praemium Imperiale, Japan Arts Association
• 2009 Pritzker Prize

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Peter Zumthor

• Kunsthaus Bregenz
• Peter Zumthor Projects, Archicentral
• Visitor Details for the Vals Spa, Switzerland(English)
• Peter Zumthor at the Internet Movie Database
• Works by or about Peter Zumthor in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
• Peter Zumthor collected news and commentary at The New York Times
• Architect Peter Zumthor photogallery at Time, 2009
• "Slideshow: The Pritzker Prize Winner," Sarah Williams Goldhagen, The New Republic, 16 April 2009
• Interview Between Peter Zumthor and Toni Hildebrandt