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The Swiss pavilion is a triumph of metaphor and abstraction, largely because it, and its contents, were orchestrated by Peter Zumthor without an exhibition designer fighting against the architect's intentions.
From his earliest years, Peter Zumthor has been involved with wood. Son of a furniture manufacturer and trained initially as a cabinet maker, he was brought up with its smell in his nostrils, and its potential at the end of his fingers. The first buildings which brought him international attention were made of timber: the little chapel at Sogn Benedetg and the Roman museum in Chur (AR January 1991), where he explored the acoustic, luminous and aromatic properties of the material with exquisite sensitivity.
Now, he has made the Swiss pavilion in Hanover, and has used much of his previous experience to make an unforgettable, calm, yet rather disturbing presence, which is perhaps the most potent in the whole of Expo. It is a timber labyrinth. Bearing in mind the principles behind the Hanover exhibition, its wooden walls are held together without nails, screws or glue, so that at the end of Expo, they can be sold off (or re-used). Long thick horizontal planks of ruddy pine are separated by pale square larch cross-members. Everything is held together by stainless-steel rods in tension quite highly stressed by springs to form in compression what Zumthor calls a 'wood yard'. It may be the most elegant and sophisticated wood yard in the world, but its three-dimensional lattice structure will work excellently as a timber seasoning device.
During the...