Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron are not your usual starchitects. Ever since rising to prominence 20 years ago, when they won the competition to transform Gilbert Scott’s Bankside Power Station into the iconic Tate Modern, they have reveled in the art of surprise. While many giants of the profession have honed their signature styles and imprinted their recognizable brand across the globe, the Swiss firm has built up an eclectic portfolio that is consistent only in its startling diversity. They are the David Bowie of architecture, connoisseurs of reinvention and perpetual convention-breakers of our built environment.
Tate Modern turbine hall with Anish Kapoor’s “Marsyas” sculpture. Via ECM Reviews
Rather than designing based on an overarching ideology, their work appears to emerge from a combination of contextual analysis — a kind of critical regionalism, perhaps, though they would no doubt shun such academic classification — with their own personal affinity to quirky kitsch and love of simply dazzling objects, with many buildings appearing as product design on a grand scale.
This has made them essentially “critic proof,” according to the The Architectural Review’s Rowan Moore, author of a comprehensive retrospective of the firm’s evolution over the last two decades: “They declare no grand theory against which the works can be judged. Things are explained in relation to their given situation.”
Those given situations have grown ever more complex and geographically diverse in recent years, with a host of commissions demanding still more innovation from the ultimate shape-shifters of modern design. Here, we take a look at some of Herzog and de Meuron’s most recent architectural expeditions — some built, some in progress, and some just breaking ground — and look for elusive trends within a body of work that defies any semblance of predictability.
The M+ Museum. Via West Kowloon Cultural District
Broken Ground: M+ Museum, Hong Kong
Last month, Herzog and de Meuron released a series of detailed renders for M+, a new museum dedicated to visual culture that recently broke ground in Hong Kong’s West Kowloon Cultural District. The 60,000-square-meter complex will house a vast collection of exhibits and installations covering fields across the arts, including design, architecture, and film.
The building is comprised of two distinct elements: a louvered tower, which will accommodate a research center, shops, and restaurants, and a horizontal podium, home to the galleries. The interior is notable for its raw, natural finishes, with timber boards covering the floors and huge exposed concrete columns supporting similarly textured ceilings.
Rendering of Helvetia HQ’s new extension. Via Designboom
The existing offices in St. Gallen, Switzerland. Via Designboom
Broken Ground: Helvetia HQ Extension, St. Gallen, Switzerland
The fourth and final part of a collaboration between Herzog and de Meuron and insurance company Helvetia, a collection of new offices is to be housed within a four-story black box upon “two mighty cones” of truncated concrete. On each façade, the rigid grid of square windows is broken up with subtle variations in the angle of each frame, lending the building a gently rippling surface.
The elevation of the building allows for a covered forecourt at the entrance of the building, while the cones themselves merge with the sloping topography of the site. These huge structural elements work as sculptural pedestals and accommodate a conference room and cafeteria for Helvetia staff.
Original rendering of the Elbphilharmonie Concert Hall. Via Hamburg.de
© Raimond Spekking
Construction progress, February 2015. Via Wikipedia
Under Construction: Elbephilharmonie, Hamburg, Germany
Complications surrounding this long-running commission have been well documented: Shackled by financial difficulties, construction on the German concert hall was put on hold in 2011, and the site remained idle for two years. Now, though, the end is in sight, with the plans for completion at the end of next year — Elbphilharmonie’s opening performance is scheduled for January 2017.
The concert hall is a contemporary reimagining of a 17th-century factory, topped with a glacial crown of slumped glass that reads as an extension of the existing brick building. Each panel of glazing is individually designed with varying levels of opacity, affording those inside specific views across Hamburg. The ephemeral façade displays distortions reminiscent of the bulging glass panels enveloping the Prada store in Tokyo.
Once complete, the building will house a 250-room five-star hotel, 47 apartments, and a 2,150-seat philharmonic hall with a smaller chamber music hall.
Rendering of Tate Modern’s extension. Via E-Architect
Construction progress, May 2014. Via Homespun London
Nearing Completion: Tate Modern Extension, London, United Kingdom
The angular, torqued tower rising alongside the existing hub of contemporary art in London is set for completion next year. The 11-story structure will house further galleries and retail and catering facilities, with the overall additions adding 70% more space for display artworks.
The building nods to its architectural forebear with a skin of perforated brick, which allows a subtle light into the building during the day and emits a faint glow by night. Below, the vast cylindrical spaces of the subterranean oil tanks — huge 23-foot-high voids that remained unused since the power station was decommissioned — were brought back to life as galleries in 2012.
© Herzog & de Meuron
Original master plan for the 2015 Milan Expo. Via Archdaily
Slow Food Pavilion. Via Design Boom
Nearing Completion: Milan Expo 2015 Master Plan; Slow Food Pavilion
In an interview for Berlin-based architecture magazine Uncube, Jacques Herzog revealed an undercurrent of conflict behind the planning of the 2015 Milan Expo, as the organizers struggled to uphold his firm’s ideological stance. Their radical proposals for the master plan involved the absence of large national pavilions, the type of ostentatious follies that have characterized most expositions in recent memory.
Ultimately though, the egotistical habits of participating nations meant that the Expo reverted to type, populated with large pavilions and with only the basic layout of Herzog & de Meuron’s plan remaining. Herzog fears the festival will amount to little more than an “obsolete vanity fair,” but the firm has contributed a real project to the show nonetheless: The Slow Food Pavilion comprises three humble “shacks,” primitive timber structures that house exhibition, tasting and theater spaces for showcasing Carlo Petrini’s Slow Food Movement.
Miu Miu Aoyama Store. © Nacasa & Partners
Completed: Miu Miu Aoyama Store, Tokyo
Herzog and de Meuron’s second ode to high fashion on Tokyo’s Miyuki Street was unveiled last month, as Miu Miu opened its doors, just across the road from the glimmering glazed lattice of the Prada Tokyo Epicenter. The store’s standout feature is its minimalist, metallic façade with a giant inclined plane that references traditional fabric awnings that have adorned shop fronts for centuries.
The opaque elevation forms an inversion of the typical transparency of fashion stores, as the architects explain: “This surface attracts the gaze and curiosity of passing pedestrians. But instead of affording a view inside, as in a shop window, the gaze is inverted; instead of the anticipated see-through window, viewers encounter self-reflection.”
The whole building reads as a precious jewelry box wrapped with cool steel that contrasts with a warm, chamfered copper lining. Inside, Herzog and de Meuron’s penchant for understated decadence is evident, with richly upholstered sofas, tables, shelving, and internal partitions lending the interior an air of both luxury and comfort.