The Architect and the Plantsman

By IAN VOLNER

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Photography by Bert Teunissen

From left: Oudolf in his garden in Hummelo, the Netherlands; Zumthor at home in Haldenstein, Switzerland

PETER ZUMTHOR IS THE CLOSEST THING architecture world has to a true hermit: The 69-year-old winner of the 2009 Pritzker Prize runs a small office from his mountain home in Switzerland; he doesn’t give interviews by telephone; he rarely makes public appearances; and his projects—like the ghostly luminescent bathhouse he created for the Swiss town of Vals—emanate a high seriousness that could only have come from this oracle of the Alps. Yet recently, the typically solitary Zumthor has taken to palling around with another prominent designer: celebrated garden designer Piet Oudolf.

Though not so private as his architectural counterpart, the Dutch-born “plantsman” (as he humbly calls himself) is also something of an ascetic, living and working far from the madding crowd in a bucolic retreat. The garden that surrounds his office—hectic with high grasses and coarse meadow flowers that look good in all seasons—is typical of the style pioneered and popularized by Oudolf, the same that’s given his High Line park and the Promenade in Manhattan’s Battery their quasi-wild charm. The designer, 68, sees his work as a pitched effort to bring a bit of quietude to the modern city. “You try to reconnect people with something they’ve lost,” he says, “something they’ve forgotten, because they are so busy in the world.”

The pair first teamed up last summer for the annual Serpentine Gallery Pavilion in London’s Hyde Park. Zumthor knew Oudolf’s work and was eager to bring him aboard. True to form, his approach in their first meeting was forthright and phlegmatic. “I showed him the [design],” says the architect, “and there was a void in the middle for the garden. And I said, ‘Take it.’ ” Critics and the public cheered the project, and now the two are at work again on what will be perhaps the most complex commission either has done to date: De Meelfabriek, a defunct factory in the Dutch industrial port city of Leiden, that will be converted into 40 high-end residential lofts with striking views of the city and lush plantings throughout.

The project is still in its early stages and will require close collaboration before it’s through. Working in tandem may mean checking their monkish credentials at the door, but for these two masters, designing as a duo may yet yield even better results than going it alone.

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©Tim Mitchell/Arcaid/Corbis

URBAN OASIS | Zumthor and Oudolf’s Zen-like 2011 Serpentine Gallery Pavilion

Zumthor on Oudolf

I DISCOVERED PIET AND HIS WORK two years ago, and then we worked together at the Serpentine. We saw we were of the same age, shared a lot of the same ideas; it was sort of like meeting some kind of a brother. So this was really nice. He says he felt the same, very comfortable. He likes that I respect gardens, plants and that I’m always willing to put them in the center if possible. I’m not meeting his prejudices about architects.

I’ve worked with a couple of landscape architects for my own house, which I designed around a garden of 12 maple trees. I was doing the design, but I needed their knowledge. I’m not so much looking for a landscape designer—I’m looking for a plant-knower and lover. This is exactly what Piet is. And then he is more, and you can see it: His work is very aesthetical and beautiful, but it is really about the prima materia. That’s what I love.

““His work is very aesthetical and beautiful, but it is really about the prima materia. That’s what I love.””

I’ve been waiting to do something like Meelfabriek, something in the city. I’ve done things like it many times with my students, but people have not given me jobs like this. Maybe it needed some time. Me, starting from the Swiss mountains, staying there and working out of there—I’m not a “network” person, and this grows from my work. I hate consultants, the guys who say, “Give me your watch and I’ll tell you what time it is.”

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Courtesy Piet Oudolf

NATURAL KINGDOM | Oudolf’s home garden features molinia ‘Transparent’ and Sanguisorba ‘red Thunder’ grasses.

I have had this idea in mind: to make the Meelfabriek’s theme the garden in the center of the dwelling place. There was a film, Green Card, with Gerard Depardieu. It takes place in this Manhattan apartment with a beautiful garden. I went to see this movie twice because I wanted to see this garden; the whole apartment is about this amazing greenhouse.

In a way, the Serpentine was an ideal collaboration, because I simply said, “Here, you have the hard part!” But we want the Meelfabriek to reach another step of collaboration. I think that vegetation, plants, they are important for our life. And if you are too much in the city, we lose touch with this. I want a greenhouse. Children, parents, they can have their plants outside over the wintertime. And these are things I don’t have to explain to Piet. I say greenhouse, and he says we need this and we do this and that and that. He is so practically oriented. I love it.

Oudolf on Zumthor

PETER IS AN ARCHITECT, and I’m the plantsman. As an architect, Peter has a very good sense of volume and space. The architect is the lead in design, and he more or less gives you the brief to work in. We plantsmen have to think about process, about how things develop through years, through time—that’s a dimension that we put in our design. You put something in the ground and sometimes it grows forever, sometimes it only grows for a few years.

““I often have to fight for my place as a plantsman. But with the best people, you don’t really have to fight.””

Meeting people in architecture has been a very positive development in my career. Only in the last four or five years have architects become interested in my work—before that, no one was. But working in a world of architects means working in a world of big egos. Some people, their egos are too big to let other egos come close—sometimes it works and sometimes not. The people who it doesn’t work so well with aren’t that good. I often have to fight for my place as a plantsman; you have to defend yourself against very strong characters. But the best people you don’t really have to fight. You find a way to communicate, and they try to understand you.

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Helene Binet

SWISS BLISS | An outdoor bath at Zumthor’s Therme Vals spa

We had this meeting at Peter’s house talking about Meelfabriek. We just outlined the garden, no specific planting ideas—just invented the type of spaces, how it could look. He created a rough drawing, and we sat down at his house and figured out what we could do.

And there was something in our conversation—an openness, honesty, like we can talk freely about cooperation and working together. I don’t have to keep my mouth shut and think to myself, Oh, don’t say that, he might not like it. I’m free to say what I want. Like with the Serpentine Gallery, Peter explained he wanted a sort of summer meadow, but as we started talking, I realized the image he had in mind was not something I could do. I had to change his idea about what was possible. At the end of the conversation, he just gave me carte blanche to do what I thought would work.

At the Meelfabriek, every house owner should have his own little garden. But as soon as they come out of that garden, there’s another part: a greenhouse and a place to sit and read, a place for people to come together who live in the complex, for people that want to have a garden and grow vegetables— there should be spaces for all of this. That is the general idea. It’s still in the early stages. The real work for me has yet to begin.

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