projects in From Inside Out – The Architecture of Peter Zumthor

 

Wim Wenders, the four-time Academy Award-nominated filmmaker known for films like Paris, Texas (1984) and Buena Vista Social Club (1999), has been working on From Inside Out – The Architecture of Peter Zumthor for about fourteen years. It was actually back in 2012 that he created his first documentary on the Swiss architect, Notes from a Day in the Life of an Architect, which was a shorter film that ignited this more-than-decade-long exploration of his portfolio.

 

Following Zumthor’s career, From Inside Out takes the viewer to his early works like St. Benedict’s Chapel up on a hill in Sumvitg, Switzerland, all the way to the newly opened David Geffen Galleries at LACMA. Here are some of the projects that are going to appear in the film.

above clip of Steilneset Memorial to the Victims of the Witch Trials, Vardø, Norway in From Inside Out

cover image © 2026, Road Movies, DCM Pictures & DCM Film Distribution 

 

 

Zumthor’s early works in Switzerland

 

‘We’re all coming from houses,’ Zumthor once remarked – it’s from this sentiment that Wenders explores the intimate corners of his work through the perspective of visitors, inhabitants, or craftspeople. The architect was born in Basel and continues to practice from his alpine atelier in Haldenstein, Switzerland. His early works are marked by their austere presence on the Swiss landscape, using wooden beams and slabs of Vals quartzite to rise from the green hills.

 

 

 

Gugalun House, Versam, Switzerland, 1990 – 1994

the architect’s Chapels

 

In the film, Wenders says, ‘This film is not trying to teach you anything. Instead, it offers you a sensual experience that will allow you to simply take in a few basic things about architecture. Your guide in this adventure of discovery is Peter Zumthor, one of the great living architects of our time.’ Creating a space of worship is almost a rite of passage for an architect. There’s Le Corbusier’s Notre-Dame du Haut, Tadao Ando’s Church of the Light. Wenders goes from the humble St. Benedict’s Chapel built in the mid-80s to Bruder Klaus Field Chapel from the early 2000s, exploring the religious spaces Zumthor brought into existence.

 

St. Benedict’s Chapel, Sumvitg, Switzerland, 1985 – 1988

 

 

Monumental museums around the world

 

One of the most beautiful parts of a museum is its openness – a space where, for just the price of a ticket, visitors can peruse and gaze upon the objects that make up history. In his extensive work on cultural spaces, Zumthor has created museums that have dotted the world. In Austria’s Bregenz Art Museum, its diffused glass facade borders Lake Constance. In speaking about the building, he describes it as, ‘Seen from the outside, the building resembles a filament. It absorbs the changing light of the sky, the misty light of the lake, emanates light and color and, depending on the angle of view, the time of day, and the weather, permits something of an insight into its own inner life.’

 

Moving to a space like the Kolumba Art Museum in Cologne, Zumthor incorporates the existing ruins of a church into the built museum that he built from the late 80s into the 90s. At LACMA, a sweeping and curving gallery that extends the David Geffen Galleries reflects the culture of Los Angeles, one of new ideas and possibilities that seem to spring from the broad boulevards of the Californian city.

 

 

Bregenz Art Museum, Austria, 1989 – 1997

what you'll see (in 3D) in the peter zumthor documentary by wim wenders - 8Kunsthaus Bregenz | image by Markus Tretter, 2019 © Kunsthaus Bregenzwhat you'll see (in 3D) in the peter zumthor documentary by wim wenders - 9Kunsthaus Bregenz | image by Markus Tretter, 2016, © Kunsthaus Bregenz