7132 – Vals, Switzerland
An architectural pilgrimage where Peter Zumthor’s legendary thermal baths meet rooms by some of the world’s greatest architects.
Why DNA Hotels Loves It
● At its heart are Peter Zumthor’s 7132 Thermal Baths, constructed from 60,000 slabs of locally quarried Vals quartzite and widely regarded as a masterpiece of contemporary architecture.
● The wider complex brings together an extraordinary architectural cast: Peter Zumthor, Tadao Ando, Kengo Kuma and Thom Mayne of Morphosis have all designed rooms here.
● From two-MICHELIN-starred dining to late-evening bathing, 7132 turns architecture, water, food and Alpine silence into one remarkably coherent experience.
Come for the Hotel. Make a Pilgrimage for the Baths.
There are design hotels, and then there are hotels built around buildings that architecture lovers travel halfway around the world simply to experience. 7132 belongs firmly in the second category. Deep in the remote Graubünden village of Vals, the hotel revolves around Peter Zumthor’s extraordinary thermal baths. Completed in the 1990s and built into the mountainside, they appear less constructed than excavated from the rock itself. Zumthor used some 60,000 slabs of local Vals quartzite to create a sequence of monolithic chambers filled with thermal water, shadows, shafts of daylight and carefully controlled views. You don’t simply visit the spa. You inhabit it.
Peter Zumthor’s Temple of Stone and Water
The baths are an exercise in sensory architecture. Move through them and temperatures change. Light disappears and returns. Water echoes against stone. Some spaces feel cavernous and almost primeval; others open suddenly towards the mountains. There is remarkably little visual noise. Stone. Water. Light. Sound. That’s essentially it. And that’s precisely why it is so powerful. Zumthor would later receive the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 2009, and the baths remain one of the buildings most closely associated with his work. For hotel guests, being able to wander downstairs and experience them repeatedly — including quieter extended bathing periods on selected evenings — transforms an architectural landmark into part of daily life.
22 Rooms Above an Architectural Icon
The main 7132 Hotel has just 22 rooms and suites, keeping the experience surprisingly intimate considering its international reputation. Interiors are deliberately restrained. Natural materials, muted colours and carefully framed mountain views allow Vals itself to provide most of the decoration. At the top of the building, Kengo Kuma designed the Penthouse and Presidential Suites, bringing his characteristic sensitivity to material, craftsmanship and nature into an already architecture-heavy setting. But 7132 has another trick up its sleeve. A short walk away is an entire hotel devoted to sleeping inside different architectural ideas.
Four Architects. Four Completely Different Rooms.
The 7132 House of Architects occupies a 1960s building within the complex and contains 73 rooms created by four formidable names: Tadao Ando, Kengo Kuma, Thom Mayne and Peter Zumthor. Choosing a room becomes part of the experience. Ando’s 18 rooms turn towards traditional Japanese teahouses, exchanging his famous monumental concrete for delicately worked timber and meditative simplicity. Kuma’s 23 rooms are extraordinary wooden cocoons. Layers of overlapping Swiss oak reference Japanese carpentry and create the sensation of retreating into a warm shelter. Thom Mayne and Morphosis take the opposite route. His rooms come in two distinct versions: indigenous wood or dramatically figured Vals quartzite, with sculptural glass showers becoming architectural objects in their own right. And then there is Zumthor.
Sleep Inside a Zumthor
Zumthor’s ten rooms are darker, richer and more sensual. Walls finished in stucco lustro, a centuries-old polished plaster technique, create extraordinary depth and texture. Habotai silk curtains and delicate capiz chandeliers introduce an unexpected softness. They aren’t conventional luxury-hotel rooms. That’s the attraction. The House of Architects effectively becomes an inhabitable exhibition in which you can experience four radically different interpretations of shelter, material and intimacy — and then sleep in them. Architecture students may have difficulty deciding whether to go to bed or take notes.
From Quartzite to Two Michelin Stars
The precision continues at 7132 Silver, the hotel’s flagship restaurant, awarded two MICHELIN Stars. It gives the property a culinary experience ambitious enough to stand alongside the architecture, while the hotel’s other restaurants provide more relaxed alternatives. That contrast matters. After an evening of architectural contemplation and elaborate fine dining, there is something wonderfully grounding about being able to eat uncomplicated Italian food or settle into the Blue Bar for a drink. 7132 may take design extremely seriously. It doesn’t require its guests to do so every minute of the day.
Luxury Reduced to the Elements
What makes 7132 exceptional isn’t conventional resort abundance. It’s reduction. A remote Alpine village. Thermal water. Locally quarried stone. Extraordinary architecture. Serious food. Silence. Everything else becomes secondary. 7132 is one of those rare hotels where the building isn’t simply the setting for the journey — it is one of the reasons to make the journey. Come to bathe inside Peter Zumthor’s masterpiece, sleep in a room by Tadao Ando, Kengo Kuma, Thom Mayne or Zumthor himself, and discover what happens when some of architecture’s biggest names are given something as intimate as a hotel room to play with. For anyone who believes a great hotel should make you feel something, Vals is essential.
