Creation really is a patient (re)search. Two of the most significant projects in the last twenty years took decades for its full fruition. Centripetal organising principle of the Guggenheim Bilbao (1997) was clearly visible in the Winton Guest House (1987). Across scale and functionality, entering the vertically inclined living room at the house is equivalent to that of the lobby at the museum, the central element gathers the family members and the museum visitors alike. Also the elongated garage at the house is reminiscent to the Richard Serra wing at the museum. For Koolhaas, the making of the Seattle Central Library (2004) was the result of two unsuccessful competition attempts to reimagine the "moral goodness" of the library typology through strategy of the void 2.0 of the Tres Grande Bibliotheque (1989) and the diagonal strategy of the Deux Bibliothèque Jussieu (1992). The first strategy being an attempt to establish a dialectical relationship between the stable (determine) and the unstable (indetermine) programs, while the second is to blur the programmatic and spatial boundaries.
Another project of significance, the Bruder Klaus Chapel by Peter Zumthor (2001-2007), a widely circulated and visited building. A building that serve less a practical purpose than a spiritual need. As important as it is, very little was known about its beginning. The final building constructed in the field on a gentle slope was the result of two projects previously designed but unbuild by Zumthor. Herz Jesu Church, Munich (1997) and Poetic landscape, Bad Salzuflen (1998—1999). In Zumthor’s own words, “The germ cell of the design for Bruder Klaus Chapel can be found in the “Poetry House” (individual structures designed to relate to a specific poem).” It is a design in search of the elemental: light and shade, water and fire, material and transcendence, the earth below and the open sky above. The same affinity is said of the Herz Jesu Church. A project embody the tension between dark and bright, earth and light, protection and exposure in vibrant lightness and darkness.
