Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron, born in the same city, in the same year with a difference of 20 days, seem destined to work together. Childhood friends and classmates, they didn't initially think of major architecture: Herzog studied commercial design, then chemistry and biology at the University of Basel, while de Meuron earned a degree in civil engineering.
Beirut Terraces residential complex under construction in Lebanon
But when both of them realized that they were bored, they switched to architecture, entering the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne to take the course of Aldo Rossi himself. In 1978, they opened their own bureau in Basel, which soon acquired offices in London, Munich and San Francisco, and even managed to become visiting professors at Harvard. "We favor art over architecture and therefore artists over architects."
Headquarters of the BBVA bank in Madrid, designed by Herzog & de Meuron, 2015
It is possible to list the iconic works of the Basel bureau for a long time, but their characteristic feature is the virtuoso ability of the authors to combine traditional architectural elements endowed with modern design and new, often experimental, materials.
"We are looking for materials that are as intellectual, versatile and complex as natural phenomena, in other words, materials that do not just attract the attention of a surprised art critic, but really make an impact and affect all our senses"
Their most famous project is the 2000 Tate Modern gallery (one of four), which Herzog and de Meuron made from the former Bankside Power Station on the south bank of the Thames. By combining traditional elements of art deco and ideas of modernism, the architects created what they later called the "building of the XNUMXst century", and twelve years later they also designed its expansion.
Extension of the Tate Modern gallery in London, 2012
"Our idea is not to do the same thing everywhere. We don't have a specific style; in every place we do something new. We try to extract this new from the local context"
By the way, it was for the Tate Modern that the duo received the Pritzker Prize in 2001, for which its committee even had to revise the rules for awarding the award, since it is traditionally given personally to an architect, and here it is given to an entire architectural office. However, the organizers felt that they had no moral right to separate Herzog and de Meuron, as they constituted the identity of the practice.
Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron during the construction of the Olympic Stadium in Beijing in 2008
"Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron have been collaborating so closely for so long that the abilities and talents of each have formed a single creative entity. We just didn't have the right to single out one of them."
Other notable works of the office include the steel structure called the "Bird's Nest": a stadium built in 2008 for the Olympic Games, as well as the famous multimillion-dollar long building - the Elbe Philharmonic in Hamburg on the site of a former warehouse in the local port.
