"Architecture has its own realm. It has a special physical relationship with life. I do not think of it primarily as either a message or a symbol, but as an envelope and background for life which goes on in adn around it, a sensitive container for the rhythm of footstops on the floor, for the concentration of work, for the silence of sleep." - p. 12

"In my youth I imagined poetry as a kind of coloured cloud made up of more or less difuse metaphors and allusions, which, although they might be enjoyable, were difficult to associate with a reliable view of the world. As an architect, I have learned to understand that the opposite of this youthful definition of poetry is probably closer to the truth.

If a work of architecture consists o forms and contents that combine to create a strong fundamental mood powerful enough to affect us, it may opssess the qualities of a work of art. This art has, ohowever, nothing to do with the interesting configurations or originality. It is concerned with insights and understanding, and above all with truth. Perhaps poetry is unexpected truth. It lives in stillness. Architecture's artistic task is to give this still expectancy a form. The building itself is never poetic. At most, it may possess subtle qualities, which, at certain moments, permit us to understand something that we were never able to understand in quite this way before." - p. 19

Peter Zumthor, Thinking Architecture