Vals

Peter Zumthor's Therme Vals, opened on 14 December 1996, is clad in 60,000 stone slabs of Valser quartzite quarried from the valley itself. The slabs come in three consistent thicknesses -- 31 mm, 47 mm, and 63 mm -- and the total of the three always equals 15 cm. Valser quartzite is a light grey and greenish fine-grained gneiss formed from granite metamorphosed during the Alpine orogeny. The primary quarrying company, Truffer AG, founded in 1983, extracts approximately 7,000 cubic meters per year from the Liemschboda quarry. In 2009, Zumthor was awarded the Pritzker Architecture Prize.

For centuries, the economy of Vals was based on subsistence agriculture and cattle breeding in harsh high-Alpine conditions. The famous Valser mountain porters (Saumtreiber) carried heavy loads over the Valserberg pass to the south, especially in winter when pack animals could not manage the snow-covered passes. Livestock was driven to markets in Bellinzona and Lugano. Until the construction of the road to Ilanz in 1879--1880, all goods transport ran southward over the Valserberg -- the valley had no direct northern road connection.

The hot mineral spring in Vals (the St. Petersquelle) was first mentioned by name in 1622, though local knowledge of the warm waters likely predates this. The natural spring water emerges at 30 degrees Celsius at an elevation of 1,252 metres. The water takes 25 to 100 years to travel from mountain rain and snow through the rock to emerge as crystal-clear mineral water. The Therme Vals features chambers at different temperatures: the indoor pool (32 degrees C), outdoor pool (36 degrees C in winter), Fire Bath (42 degrees C), Ice Bath (14 degrees C), Flower Bath (33 degrees C), Sound Bath (35 degrees C), and the Drinking Stone with natural ferrous spring water at 29.8 degrees C.

The Zervreilasee is a reservoir located southwest of Vals at an elevation of 1,862 metres. The Zervreila Dam is a concrete arch dam built between 1953 and 1957, standing 151 metres high with a crest length of 504 metres, impounding the Valserrhein river. The reservoir holds 100.5 million cubic metres of water. The village of Zervreila was submerged when the reservoir filled. Construction of the dam between 1951 and 1958 provided a critical economic stimulus for the valley, bringing jobs and infrastructure at a time when Vals was still reeling from the 1951 avalanche disaster that killed 19 people.

A chronicle of avalanches (die Lawinechronik) has been kept in Vals since 1598. In 1868, catastrophic floods inundated the entire valley floor and destroyed parts of the settlement; the village seriously considered mass emigration to America. On 20 January 1951, during the infamous 'Winter of Terror', a 300-metre-wide avalanche struck Vals, burying 34 people and destroying 23 buildings. 19 people died, including 14 children. The disaster led the municipality to invest CHF 21.5 million in reforestation and protective structures.

Peter Zumthor, born 26 April 1943 in Basel, designed the Therme Vals between 1993 and 1996. The building is half-buried in the hillside with a grass-covered roof that merges with the surrounding meadow. It consists of 15 rectangular stone blocks, each 5 metres high, arranged in a grid pattern. The roofs of the blocks do not touch -- 6-to-8-centimetre gaps between them are covered with glass, allowing natural light to filter through as thin luminous lines. Zumthor lived in the hamlet of Leis above Vals for nearly two decades. He described his philosophy: 'Architecture today needs to reflect on the tasks and possibilities which are inherently its own.'

The Walser are descendants of Alemannic settlers who migrated from the upper Rhone valley (Valais/Wallis) into the high Alpine valleys between roughly 1150 and 1450. Around 1300, German-speaking Walser from Upper Valais moved into the Vals valley. They received the Walserrecht (colonist right): personal freedom, the right to form their own judicial communities, and hereditary land rights. The Walser brought their distinctive Blockbau (log construction) building tradition -- wooden houses built with interlocking horizontal logs, triangular roofs, and elevated granaries resting on mushroom-shaped stone stilts. The Walser dialect preserves archaisms from Old High German lost in other dialects.

Vals has two commercial mineral springs: the St. Petersquelle (at 1,252 m) and the St. Paulsquelle (at 1,815 m, among Switzerland's highest commercial springs). In 1960, entrepreneurs Hess and Schrauder redeveloped the St. Petersquelle, launching the modern Valser brand. The water takes 25 to 100 years to travel through the rock. In 2002, Coca-Cola acquired Valser Mineralquellen AG, and Valser became Switzerland's market-leading mineral water brand. Key milestones include designer glass bottles by Luigi Colani (1990), PET bottles designed by Mario Botta (2001), and 100% recycled rPET bottles in 2019.