Buildings
Herzog & de Meuron Propose Cut-Glass Ziggurat for Tate
Expansion
(archrecord.construction.com - 08/23/2006)
By Adam
Mornement
Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron
have returned to the scene of a triumph, Tate Modern museum
in London. In July the Swiss duo revealed the design for a
giant glass pyramidal extension to Bankside Power Station,
the Tate’s neoclassical home. It will increase the existing
floor space by 60 percent.
Since opening in 2000, Tate Modern has
become one of the most popular art galleries in the world.
It was designed to accommodate 1.8 million visitors a year,
but last year alone 4.1 million art enthusiasts passed through
its doors. New York’s Museum of Modern Art drew 2.67
million visitors over the same period, and 2.5 million visited
the Pompidou Center in Paris. “There is serious overcrowding,
particularly at weekends. Many of the comments made by visitors
refer to the congestion in the building,” says a Tate
official.
Bankside still generates electricity.
So when, in 2000, EDF Energy Networks began considering plans
to move its plant from the Switch House substation into a
smaller area within the building, Tate director Nicholas Serota
took to deploying the vacancy for the museum’s use. Herzog
& de Meuron were appointed in January 2005.
The extension comprises 11 stories of
glass blocks stacked on top of each other. The blocks protrude
at a multitude of angles from the side of the essentially
pyramidal form. It is a fragmentary, experimental contrast
to the monolithic power station. The architects say that the
protruding cubes can be interpreted in two ways: as the erosion
of the pyramid, or as a pyramid in the process of emerging.
The addition, which is sited adjacent
to the power station’s southern facade, will include
10 new galleries for contemporary art, accommodating photography,
film, video and performance art. Other features include teaching
spaces, two new performance areas within the oil tanks of
the former power station, and a new entrance that opens up
a north-south axis through the building for the first time.
The top three floors of the 230-foot
structure are visible from the north, changing the appearance
of the South Bank from St Paul’s Cathedral, a view that
is generally considered sacrosanct in London. The Twentieth
Century Society, an organization dedicated to the preservation
of post-1914 arts and design, has already expressed concerns
about the height of the proposed addition, as well as its
adventurous form, which the Society fears may detract from
the original structure.
Tate Modern will submit a planning application
in the autumn, which it hopes will be granted next spring.
The £165 million ($314 million) cost will be equivalent
to the original conversion of Bankside Power Station. Officials
hope to complete the addition by 2012, when London hosts the
Olympic Games.
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