The
Tate Modern
London
Bankside, UK
1998
- 2000
Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron, architects
Designed by Pritzker Prize Laureates Herzog & de Meuron, the Tate Modern is one of the world's most celebrated examples of adaptive reuse. The enormous art gallery was created from the shell of the old, unsightly Bankside Power Station on the Thames River in London. For the restoration, builders added 3,750 tons of new steel. The industrial-gray Turbine Hall runs nearly the entire length of the building. Its 115 foot high ceiling is illuminated by 524 glass panes.
The Tate
Modern
by
Pritzer Prize Laureates Herzog & de Meuron
Photos: Courtesy the Pritzker Prize Page
Reprinted with permission
Speaking of the project, Herzog and de Meuron stated, "It is exciting for us to deal with existing structures because the attendant constraints demand a very different kind of creative energy. In the future, this will be an increasingly important issue in European cities. You cannot always start from scratch. We think this is the challenge of the Tate Modern as a hybrid of tradition, Art Deco and super modernism: it is a contemporary building, a building for everybody, a building of the 21st century. And when you don't start from scratch, you need specific architectural strategies that are not primarily motivated by taste or stylistic preferences. Such preferences tend to exclude rather than include something. Our strategy was to accept the physical power of Bankside's massive mountain-like brick building and to even enhance it rather than breaking it or trying to diminish it. This is a kind of Aikido strategy where you use your enemy's energy for your own purposes. Instead of fighting it, you take all the energy and shape it in unexpected and new ways."
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