Peter Zumthor Hon RA (b. 1943)

Architect Peter Zumthor was born in Basel in 1943 and raised in Oberwil, Baselland. Zumthor first trained as cabinetmaker from 1958 until 1962 in his father’s shop, before training as a designer and architect at the Kunstgewerbeschule Basel, from 1963, the Vorkurs und Fachklasse, and then the Pratt Institute in New York.

From 1967, he was employed as a building and planning consultant of historical villages with the Department for the Preservation of Monuments, Canton of Graubunden, in Switzerland. It was here that he began to think about renovations.

In 1978, Zumthor established his own architectural practice in Haldenstein, Switzerland. He was visiting professor at the Southern California Institute of Architecture, SCI-ARC, in Los Angeles in 1988, followed by the Technische Universitat Munich in 1989 and at Graduate School of Design, GSD, at Harvard University in Boston in 1999. From 1996 until 2008, Zumthor was a professor at the Accademia di Architettura, Universita della Svizzera Italiana in Mendrisio.