Space explorer.

In Switzerland, architectural debate - particularly around the question of how to conceive spaces appropriate for the presentation of art - has become especially intense in recent years, fueled by a string of noteworthy projects by internationally recognized Swiss architects such as Herzog & de Meuron (the Goetz collection near Munich and the future Tate Gallery in London), Gigon/Guyer (Kirchner Museum in Davos and the Annex of the Museum of Fine Arts, Winterthur), Mario Botta (San Francisco MoMA), and Luigi Snozzi (his reconstruction of the village of Monte Carasso). With the recent completion of his building for the Kunsthaus Bregenz, Peter Zumthor has moved to the center of the debate. After apprenticing as a cabinetmaker in Basel, he went on to study architecture at New York's Pratt institute in the mid-'60s, which led to an appointment back home as architect for the Department for the Care and Preservation of Monuments in the canton of Graubunden (1968-78). In 1979, Zumthor started his own practice in Haldenstein, near Chur, and it was here that he made a name for himself, realizing a series of significant projects throughout the region. The following conversation took place in late February at Zumthor's studio.

HANS RUDOLF REUST: Kunsthaus Bregenz opened at the end of July 1997 with a light installation by James Turrell. At the moment it's showing painting and sculpture by Per Kirkeby. Have you consciously created an exhibition setting for your generation of artists?

PETER ZUMTHOR: The mandate of Kunsthaus Bregenz is to function like a Kunsthalle, an exhibition space without a collection, a place to house contemporary art. Perhaps I do see it as a space for the art I grew up with, the Minimal and Conceptual work of the '60s and '70s. The structure is a neutral vessel; it's really reduced to the absolute minimum, to the essential, but through specific resonances of material and moods of lighting, the architecture emanates something precise, strong, sensual. It has a material presence, like the works themselves.

HRR: In the case of Kirkeby, at least, a certain tension is set up between the sleek concrete walls and the open landscapes in the paintings.

PZ: The art vies with strong architecture, has to define itself against it, and gains in the process. I'm interested in music, literature, art, and philosophy, but ultimately I'm a passionate architect. My goal for the Kunsthaus was to make a neutral but very strong space, and I'm thrilled that artists like Turrell, Kirkeby, or Pistoletto think it's great.

HRR: How do you view the light cube of Kunsthaus Bregenz in relation to other museums, for instance, Renzo Plano's newly opened Fondation Beyeler in Riehen, outside of Basel?

PZ: I can trace the origins of the Fondation Beyeler quite clearly, from the de Menil in Texas to Basel. As for myself, I always try to work without precedents. I just let the site take hold of me. In Bregenz it was the town's lakeside setting, particularly the play of light on the water, that I wanted to carry over into the building. The idea of a proudly radiant body was there almost from the start. We only chose glass as a material later; I wanted to make use of it like a bird's plumage, We essentially reconceived the idea of natural lighting within a museum, and we did so by actually separating the exhibition tower or cube from the administration building.

HRR: It's rather a unique experience to stand in a solid structural shell of concrete that still lets in outside light on (or from above) every floor. Although one has no direct view of the outside, one still has an immediate sensation of light and weather conditions outside, You're inside and outside the building at the same time.

PZ: In Bregenz the shifting daylight takes on an almost magical quality, and for some critics this makes the building "auratic." But for me the fact that the walls are used everyday, that they have nails in them for hanging work, and that a patina is thus formed counters this feeling.

HRR: You're working on a project right now in Berlin, which will be built over the torture cellars that have been opened up beneath the grounds of the former Gestapo and SS headquarters. It will become the archive and international exhibition center called "The Topography of Terrors."

PZ: It's neither a museum nor a monument; that's quite important. The building is to be a center for exhibitions, special events, and research. The history of this site is so horrific that putting up a building that looks like a museum would be like saying that history is settled once and for all. A building that looks like a center for exhibitions and seminars would equate this place with other such centers, and would have the effect of neutralizing the site. So, the solution was a slatted construction of concrete and glass, that I don't think looks reminiscent of anything that's come before it.

HRR: And it won't be a monument, despite being 425 feet long, 56 feet tall, and 33 feet deep?

PZ: No. But at the same time it must have an impact to safeguard the site. If it succeeds, the building will convey a feeling that never existed before. The body of the building is totally transparent - 50 percent of the surface is window. When you step inside, you see out - no matter where you are. And the ground floor, where the torture cellars were, won't be comfortably heated. It won't be someplace where you can just step inside, put your coat down, and have a coffee.

HRR: How do you view the painfully belated discussion taking place now in Switzerland around the business dealings of certain banks, and on official government policy toward the Third Reich?

PZ: I've been aware since 1968 that the Swiss were no great heroes, that they maneuvered in order to survive. I've read Max Frisch. But maybe it was better to maneuver a little than to be immediately annexed.

HRR: But do you set ethical limits on this maneuvering?

PZ: I was one of the first signers of a petition against dirty money. But that has no direct tie to the work in Berlin. My challenge as an architect was to devise a new type of structure, in order not to either burden this site with gratuitous meanings, obscuring its appalling history, or to interpret it moralistically. As soon as this building is completed, it will immediately be defined as the structure for this particular site, which will always call for redefinition. You can't evade meaning forever, but I would like to create a calm, composed environment, not some tearjerking machine like the Holocaust Museum in Washington, precisely out of respect for the victims and those close to them.

Hans Rudolf Reust is a Bern-based writer and critic.

Translated from the German by David Jacobson.