"In general we no longer understand architecture, at least by far not in the way we understand music. We have outgrown the symbolism of lines and figures, as we have grown unaccustomed to the tonal effects of rhetoric, no longer having sucked in this kind of cultural mother's milk from the first moment of life. Originally everything about a Greek or Christian building meant something, and in reference to a higher order of things. This atmosphere of inexhaustible meaningfulness hung about the building like a magic veil. Beauty entered the system only secondarily, impairing the basic feeling of uncanny sublimity, of sanctification by magic or the gods' nearness. At the most, beauty tempered the dread —but this dread was the prerequisite everywhere.
What does the beauty of a building mean to us now? The same as the beautiful face of a mindless woman: something masklike."
Friedrich Nietzsche
From what I understand, Nietzsche seems to talk about architecture in the past as something that came with a lot of meaning and weightage. When he refers to it as architecture with "a higher order of things", he implies that there were almost divine and spiritual elements in architecture of the past. The main element of the architecture was the meaning, symbolism and atmosphere that it was trying to convey. As he said, "beauty tempered the dread - but this dread was the prerequisite everywhere" he implies that beauty enhanced the divine qualities of the space however the divinity was the main aspect of the architecture. Beauty came as a secondary element to the meaning of the building.
When he says "stone is more stone than it used to be" I find that there are two ways of looking at it.
Has Zumthor taken away the integrity of the stone away by complicating and altering its use too much?
One way of looking at it is to say that now materials have been broken down to their bare essentials. After reading what Zumthor says, "Take a stone: you can saw it, grind it, drill into it, split it" you could argue that he treats it as a mere object that can be altered. Therefore Nietzsche implies that materials have been stripped off of their symbolic qualities and have simply been used as material. Hence "stone is more stone" simply as a material as compared to a symbol as used in the past.
On the other hand, you could say that Zumthor has understood the use of a material to the point that it is now much more than what it used to be. How he's taken a material and extracted all its qualities, shining light upon all aspects of it as he says, "then hold it up to the light - different again. There are a thousand different possibilities in one material alone". Nietzsche implied that all aspects of one material have been studied so closely that we are now able to use it in a multitude of ways. The character and essence of a material has been developed so much that it implies a different meaning when used differently.
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