Famous for iconic structures such as the Tate Modern in London, the National Stadium in Beijing (also known as the Bird’s Nest), the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg and the De Young Museum in San Francisco, the duo Herzog & de Meuron sits comfortably at the forefront of contemporary design. Swiss architects, who received the Pritzker Prize in 2001, have advanced the architectural avant-garde through deconstructivist designs and innovative use of materials and geometries.
Founded by Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron in Basel more than 40 years ago, the architecture firm is today a sprawling international firm with five senior partners and over 600 employees working on (mainly, but not exclusively) large-scale projects – museums, hospitals, skyscrapers and arenas – in almost every corner of the globe.
Herzog & de Meuron, Elbphilharmonie Hamburg. Photo © Iwan Baan. Courtesy of the Royal Academy of Arts.
From now on, the Royal Academy of Arts in London will host an exhibition presenting their most ambitious projects. Launching on July 14 and in close collaboration with the architects, the exhibition takes place in three separate galleries. The first gallery brings much of their “Kabinett” – an open space for storage and research – from Basel to London. Around 400 items, ranging from scale models to photographs and even augmented reality experiences, will be displayed on wooden shelves for visitors to peruse.
Herzog & de Meuron, extension of the Stadtcasino Basel. Photo ©Ruedi Walti. Courtesy of the Royal Academy of Arts.
Research material from the duo’s best-known projects is showcased in this first gallery. For the Tate Modern, Herzog & de Meuron transformed Bankside Power Station into a kind of vertical city. Their Elbphilharmonie project in Hamburg was informed by three archetypal spaces: the ancient Greek amphitheater, a sports arena and a modern festival tent. Beijing’s National Stadium, designed as a grand public art sculpture, marked their first collaboration with artist Ai Weiwei, while the Lincoln Road project saw the architects reimagining ordinary parking lots in Miami as commercial spaces and outdoor residences.
The second gallery space takes the form of a projection room. A central screen presents the editing of a new film, rehab, created by filmmakers Bêka & Lemoine. It offers an intimate look into daily life at their groundbreaking REHAB clinic for neurorehabilitation and paraplegiology in Basel from the perspective of patients undergoing treatment, mapping patient interactions with the structure at different stages of recovery.
Herzog & de Meuron, REHAB Basel. Photo © Katalin Deer. Courtesy of the Royal Academy of Arts.
The third and final space focuses on a real project currently in development, the Universitäts-Kinderspital Zürich (Children’s University Hospital Zurich), which emerged from a competition in 2012 to redefine hospital architecture and healing spaces. The main feature of this room is an augmented reality model of a patient’s room, rendered at scale, providing a near-tangible recreation of a humanized hospital environment. Visitors can virtually enter a hospital room and observe a 360-degree view of the streets, gardens and public spaces before the hospital’s completion in 2024.
“Herzog & de Meuronis on view at the Royal Academy of Arts, 6 Burlington Gardens, London, W1S 3ET, from 14 July to 15 October 2023.
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