The Pritzker Architecture Prize on Flickr (Post 1 - Award 4) / Discuss

yushimoto_02 [christian]    says:

Dear Members!
In this new thread we want to present you the work of Herzog and the Meuron. We hope that you enjoy these short contributions and we would like to invite everybody to participate in this discussion by contributing with Your favourite shots, comments, proposals, anything you like.

"A building is a building. It cannot be read like a book; it doesn't have any credits, subtitles or labels like picture in a gallery. In that sense, we are absolutely anti-representational. The strength of our buildings is the immediate, visceral impact they have on a visitor."
— Jacques Herzog

Herzog & de Meuron Architekten is a Swiss architecture firm, founded and headquartered in Basel, Switzerland in 1978. The careers of founders and senior partners Jacques Herzog (born 1950), and Pierre de Meuron (born 1950), closely paralleled one another, with both attending the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zürich.

They are perhaps best known for their conversion of the giant Bankside Power Station in London to the new home of the Tate Museum of Modern Art (2000). Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron have been visiting professors at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design since 1994 and professors at ETH Zürich since 1999.

Herzog & de Meuron received international attention very early in their career with the Blue House in Oberwil, Switzerland (1980); the Stone House in Tavole, Italy (1988); and the Apartment Building along a Party Wall in Basel (1988). The firm’s breakthrough project was the Ricola Storage Building in Laufen, Switzerland (1987). Renown in the United States came with Dominus Winery in Yountville, California (1998).

Among their completed buildings, the Ricola cough lozenge factory and storage building in Mulhouse, France stands out for its unique printed translucent walls that provide the work areas with a pleasant filtered light. A railway utility building in Basel, Switzerland called Signal Box has an exterior cladding of copper strips that are twisted at certain places to admit daylight. A library for the Technical University in Eberswalde, Germany has 17 horizontal bands of iconographic images silk screen printed on glass and on concrete. An apartment building on Schötzenmattstrasse in Basel has a fully glazed street facade that is covered by a moveable curtain of perforated latticework. It is impossible to list here all of their noteworthy building projects.

In many projects the architects have worked together with artists, an eminent example of that practice being the collaboration with Rémy Zaugg, Thomas Ruff and with Michael Craig-Martin.

In 2001, Herzog & de Meuron were awarded the Pritzker Prize, the highest of honours in architecture. Rafael Moneo, another Pritzker Laureate who received the prize in 1996, wrote on Herzog and de Meuron that their work is "…among the very few architects whose work can be interpreted as an effort to regain architecture’s original grounds. A search for primariness, for direct contact with the constructive essence of architecture, characterizes their work and differentiates it from that of others of their generation, with whom they diverge in their emphasis on originality.”

Pritzker Price - Jury chairman J. Carter Brown, commented, "One is hard put to think of any architects in history that have addressed the integument of architecture with greater imagination and virtuosity." This in reference to HdeM's innovative use of exterior materials and treatments, such as silkscreened glass. Architecture critic and Pritzker juror Ada Louise Huxtable summarized HdeM's approach concisely: "They refine the traditions of modernism to elemental simplicity, while transforming materials and surfaces through the exploration of new treatments and techniques."

Of materials, Herzog has said, “The material world is what we deal with—we try to understand what matter is. What it means and how we can use it in order to enhance its specific qualities. The methods we use to print on concrete, for example, are a product of our research. The printing method existed, but we started to adapt it to and use it for printing photographs on concrete. It is a very interesting, yet simple process. Chemical treatment in the pattern of the photograph causes the surface of the concrete to cure at different lengths of time. We are also interested in the mosses and lichens that grow on the surfaces of stones. They are an indicator of the air quality and their color is spectacular, so bright—the oranges, the yellows—so beautiful that it almost blinds you.”

Professionally, the Herzog & de Meuron partnership has grown to become an office with over 120 people worldwide. In addition to their headquarters in Basel, they have offices in London, Munich and San Francisco. Herzog has explained, “We work in teams, but the teams are not permanent. We rearrange them as new projects begin. All of the work results from discussions between Pierre and me, as well as our other partners, Harry Gugger and Christine Binswanger. The work by various teams may involve many different talents to achieve the best results which is a final product called architecture by Herzog & de Meuron.”
Originally posted at 7:46AM, 17 January 2010 PDT (permalink)
yushimoto_02 [christian] edited this topic 29 months ago.