Archinect - News

Sotheby’s taps Herzog & de Meuron and PBDW to renovate historic Breuer Building

2024-11-04T15:45:00-05:00

The opportunity to renovate one of New York City’s most important cultural buildings, Marcel Breuer’s Brutalist icon at 945 Madison Avenue, has been granted to a partnership that includes Herzog & de Meuron and PBDW Architects after Sotheby’s named the firm to the project on Monday.

H&dM's co-founder Jacques Herzog says the project will be carried out with much the same precision as the firm’s previous renovation of the Park Avenue Armory not far away in their shared Upper East Side neighborhood. Existing spaces will be adapted to meet the current business and exhibition needs, while Breuer’s "original vision" of the 58-year-old design is recuperated both within and without for both the public and private clients.

"The Breuer Building is such an amazing architectural icon of postwar modernism which we—just like all architects—have always admired. Since our early work in the 1970’s, we have always placed great importance on working with existing buildings, not only from a sustainable...

Herzog & de Meuron opens new University Children's Hospital in Zurich

2024-09-30T17:08:00-04:00

Herzog & de Meuron (HdM) has updated their progress on the new 14.69-million-square-foot University Children's Hospital in Zurich after its ten-year journey to completion. The two-building program contains 2,300 rooms and roughly 48 different functional areas alternating between three and seven above-grade stories for each respective Acute Care and Research/Teaching functions.

Image: © Maris Mezulis

There are a total of 200 beds and underground parking spaces for 341 cars in the former, while the larger research building contains a total of 280 permanent or temporary workstations, a bistro, 320-seat lecture theater, two 100-seminar rooms, and combined laboratory spaces equal to almost 92,600 square feet (8,600 square meters).

Image: © Herzog & de Meuron, Foto Michael Schmidt

As the largest-such children’s facility in Switzerland, the project replaces a long-outdated facility with a comprehensive space that combines academic knowledge and guidance with proven holistic methods (e.g. na...

Herzog & de Meuron's mass timber HORTUS project advances in Switzerland

2024-08-27T12:13:00-04:00

The new mass timber HORTUS office project from Herzog & de Meuron is advancing towards completion in Allschwil, Switzerland. Construction will yield 600 workplaces and be fully offset after 31 years in use. The firm says it is “one of the most sustainable office buildings in the German-speaking world.”

Herzog & de Meuron's FORUM UZH design moves forward in Zurich

2024-05-16T18:36:00-04:00

Herzog & de Meuron is advancing on the construction of its new FORUM UZH design at the University of Zurich following a permit issuance for the project whose bid was born out of a 2018 international competition.

Preparatory site work will begin in August for the new building, which replaces former gymnasium structures with a facility for research and education at a capacity of 6,000 people. Included in its program are over 700 individual workspaces, a central library, seminar rooms, and sports halls.

This is their first design for the university. The firm also recently broke ground on another academic building project, the new UCSF Health Helen Diller Hospital at the University of San Francisco, a 15-story hybrid healthcare facility and academic medical complex that is expected to be completed in 2030.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Herzog & de Meuron (@herzogdemeuron)

Herzog & de Meuron breaks ground on new $4.3 billion UCSF Health Helen Diller Hospital project in San Francisco

2024-05-06T17:04:00-04:00

A groundbreaking was held recently for Herzog & de Meuron's new UCSF Health Helen Diller Hospital in San Francisco. The $4.3 billion project that will tie together two existing buildings with a new 15-story facility is expected to culminate in 2030 at 880,000 square feet and serves as a new connector to the campus as the lynchpin for the university’s 30-year Parnassus Heights master plan.

UCSF says this is necessary to maintain its presence in various fields of biomedical research, patient care, and medical teaching. The design includes 682 total beds and features a “holistic focus” on the needs of patients bolstered by the latest medical technologies and the ability to increase collaboration between scientists, staff, and students of the highly competitive UCSF School of Medicine. HDR and Field Operations are contributing to the project as collaborators.

Herzog & de Meuron update plans for the Lusail Museum in Qatar

2024-02-15T11:54:00-05:00

Herzog & de Meuron’s plans for a new museum in Qatar have been updated with new renderings and a virtual flythrough animation showcasing what in the future will be a world-leading destination for scholars of Orientalist art and culture.

The forthcoming Lusail Museum in Doha is conceived of as a “vertically layered souk, or miniature city contained within a single building.” Its design features an intersection of three spherical forms along whose tangents a crescent-shaped internal street is created as a connector between the central lobby and other public functions of the building, including a library, auditorium, shop, café, and prayer hall.

Image: © Herzog & de Meuron. Courtesy Qatar Museums.

The building addresses its coastal site with a sand-like exterior finish, appearing as though it were a natural landform. A sculptural polished plaster stair serves as the entrance to the building. Inside, four galleries are designed to replicate domed spaces at the Palace of Topkapi in Istanb...

Herzog & de Meuron updates Sixth&Blanco mass timber project in Austin

2023-11-16T19:00:00-05:00

Herzog & de Meuron has updated its plans for the forthcoming Sixth&Blanco mixed-use development in Austin, Texas.

The mass timber design will be realized as the firm’s first-ever completed work in Texas. The plan calls for a full city block construction with a hotel, office spaces, a residential component, and retail.

Image: © Herzog & de Meuron

Updated renderings provided by the firm a year removed from the project’s initial announcement show a more concise linear volume with added greenery and recesses minus many original facade elements in whose place a new open-air terrace has been created on the structure’s third level.

Image: © Herzog & de Meuron

New colorful reflective awnings were added at the drop-off point for shoppers and hotel guests. A total of 50,000 square feet of retail space is planned, along with ten apartment units totaling 4,600 square feet and located on the two uppermost floors. The design is organized around a central courtyard and sa...

Pentagram utilizes architectural forms to create a new visual identity for the Memphis Art Museum

2023-11-02T20:04:00-04:00

Pentagram has released materials showcasing their new visual identity project undertaken for their clients at the Memphis Art Museum (formerly the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art) ahead of the completion of its Herzog & de Meuron-led expansion in 2025.

The lettering and logo included in the kit derive from cross-section drawings of the new 122,000-square-foot building, which will grace the center of downtown at Overton Park. The expanded museum also forms the anchor of a wider riverfront development master plan that will reorient the commercial/cultural district. Costs for the expansion have been reported around $180 million.

“We have worked with the greater Memphis community for years on our vision for a new museum, and as it begins to take shape, we are proud to see that it will be a place for community and connectivity unlike anything in our city’s history,” the museum's board president, Carl Person, told the Memphis Flyer newspaper recently about the institutional pivot. “It is tru...

Tate Modern resolves viewing platform privacy dispute with Neo Bankside residents

2023-10-23T13:48:00-04:00

The Tate Modern in London has announced its compliance with the UK High Court’s February ruling regarding a privacy case that involved its 10th-floor viewing gallery and five residents of the adjacent Neo Bankside apartments.

The museum will now restrict visitors' access to the platform, which was constructed in 2016 as part of a Herzog & de Meuron-led $318 million Blavatnik Building expansion. The remedy will help the Tate avoid paying any monetary damages, as was the will of the plaintiffs. Their decision puts an end to a saga that has touched on Inner London’s class conflicts over housing and could potentially carry future ramifications in regards to design and the public realm, according to Guardian critic Oliver Wainwright and other observers.

Natasha Rees, a senior partner at the law firm Forsters, which represented the five Neo Bankside residents, said: “An award of damages was never our clients’ aim and they are grateful for the Tate’s recent willingness, instead, to agree t...

Jacques Herzog previews the Royal Academy exhibition with Christopher Hawthorne

2023-07-11T13:42:00-04:00

Actually, the reason we curate the shows ourselves is not because we want to control how people think, but quite the opposite. I don’t want to be too defensive. I’m not a moralist. If I would to try to control everything, I would have chosen the wrong job.

Back in May, Hawthorne met with Jacques Herzog at the opening of the Venice Biennale to discuss the upcoming exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts in London as well as several prevailing industry trends that have impacted his firm’s size and projects in the United States and abroad. He says that, among other project types, “neglected” hospital design offers architects the most potential. The 73-year-old Herzog then offers some insights into the firm’s reluctance to work in Russia after last year, the limits of adaptive reuse, curation, and the perception of his counterpart's role as a firm leader vis-à-vis his own.

Previously on Archinect: Herzog & de Meuron’s first London exhibition in 20 years to be hosted by the Royal Academy of Arts

“Pierre has always organized the business, going back to when we were starting out. But it’s not fair to say that Pierre is the business guy and I’m the artist,” he tells the former LA Times critic. “Ideally, we look into projects together and we di...

Herzog & de Meuron’s Powerhouse Arts restoration opens in Brooklyn

2023-06-06T14:56:00-04:00

A crossover arts and manufacturing project from Herzog & de Meuron opened on May 19 following several years of construction that remade a former brownfield site into the new home of the non-profit Powerhouse Arts in Red Hook, Brooklyn.

Coinciding with the ongoing cleanup of the Gowanus Canal, the project reused a Turbine Hall located at the site of Brooklyn's Rapid Power Transit Station from 1904 while adding new space in the shell of a reinstated Bolier House building that was semi-preserved in the process.

Image © Iwan Baan/Courtesy of Herzog & de Meuron.

Nicknamed “The Batcave” by many of the city’s graffiti taggers after its decommissioning in the 1950s, the site was decontaminated as part of the New York State Brownfield Cleanup program prior to the firm winning the project's commission and then beginning its planning phase at the end of 2016.

Image © Iwan Baan/Courtesy of Herzog & de Meuron.

Herzog & de Meuron says: “The industrial landscape and history of the site play a pivota...

M+ museum receives donations from Herzog & de Meuron including Bird's Nest stadium model

2023-03-21T13:51:00-04:00

Hong Kong's M+ museum of contemporary visual culture has announced a two-phase donation by Herzog & de Meuron, the firm behind its design.

The first phase of the donation consists of a section model of the Herzog & de Meuron-designed Beijing National Stadium (in collaboration with artist Ai Weiwei), known as the “Bird’s Nest”, which was the main site at the 2008 Summer Olympic Games.

Installation view of the National Stadium section model at the M+. Photo: Lok Cheng. Courtesy of M+, Hong Kong.

The second phase will include a selection of process materials from the firm’s key projects in Asia and elsewhere. This donation makes M+ the first museum in Asia to boast a significant holding of materials related to the work of Herzog & de Meuron.

Detail of the National Stadium section model. © Herzog & de Meuron. Photo: Lok Cheng. Courtesy of M+, Hong Kong.

The “Bird’s Nest” model is currently on display in M+’s East Galleries as part of an ongoing exhibition titled Things, Spaces, Interac...

Anish Kapoor completes 'mini-Bean' at Herzog & de Meuron's 56 Leonard

2023-02-06T13:51:00-05:00

After years of delays, New York City finally has a shiny silver bean of its own. A new sculpture by Anish Kapoor—modeled after his famous Cloud Gate, known as the Bean, in Chicago—was officially unveiled this week. [...] Despite its resemblance to Cloud Gate, is different in several key ways, reported Tribeca Citizen in 2018. For example, while Chicago’s Bean is bolted securely to the ground, Manhattan’s mini-Bean is more free-flowing, able to move and shift depending on the weather.

The $8 million freestanding sculpture has been teased since 2008 when renderings for Herzog & de Meuron’s domineering 56 Leonard Street tower were first revealed to the public. It has a less-expensive twin at the MFA Houston and will get an official name later in the coming months, according to Hyperallergic.

“[It’s] small change for these people,” Kapoor (who purchased a condo in the building in 2016) said, speaking of developer Alexico Group’s private financing. “They should be giving something back already, and more, honestly.”

View this post on Instagram A post shared by M I C H A E L T. Y O U N G (@mchlanglo793)

Herzog & de Meuron reveals plans for a dedicated Alexander Calder sculpture garden in Philadelphia

2022-09-07T17:25:00-04:00

The extraordinary work of late artist Alexander Calder will soon be displayed in his hometown of Philadelphia thanks to a dedicated new sculpture garden designed by Herzog & de Meuron.

The Calder Foundation has shared renderings of the forthcoming Calder Gardens project ahead of its anticipated fall groundbreaking on a 1.8-acre site located adjacent to other prominent arts institutions along the city’s Benjamin Franklin Parkway.

Image © Herzog & de Meuron

The images appear to show a sunken structure with subterranean galleries that emerge into a dynamic 18,000-square-foot main building surrounded by gardens manicured by famed landscape designer Piet Oudolf. HdM says that the project "blurs the boundaries between architecture and the natural world" and is thus intended to "unfold as a choreographed progression that moves visitors from the quotidian city context to a more contemplative realm beyond the traditional museum experience" in order to "catalyze discovery and reflection."

Imag...

Herzog & de Meuron designs a mass timber mixed-use development in Austin

2022-08-19T15:14:00-04:00

Herzog & de Meuron has unveiled designs for a mixed-use, mass timber development in Austin, Texas. When complete, it will be the firm’s first built project in Texas.

The Sixth&Blanco scheme, located in a district adjacent to downtown and the Colorado River, will span a full city block and include a hotel, offices, residences, shops, and dining opportunities. According to the architects, the design seeks to compliment the "existing vernacular store fronts, notable restaurants, stores, galleries, generous tree-lined streets, and the walkable character of the surrounding Clarksville neighborhood."

The developers hope to integrate within the program "generous greenery, passively-cooled indoor/outdoor spaces, an active neighborhood storefront and the use of a materials palette aligned with the historic fabric."

Image courtesy of Herzog & de Meuron

Within a continuous horizontal wooden structure, a collection of shops and restaurants occupy the ground floor, offices on the second floor, a...

Herzog & de Meuron's new Royal College of Art Battersea Campus opens to the public

2022-05-23T17:49:00-04:00

Big news today as Herzog & de Meuron’s anticipated expansion of the Royal College of Art has officially opened in the Battersea district of London.

Characterized by a fusion of seven separate facilities into one combined structure, the new £135 million ($169 million) complex entails the creation of new social and educational spaces for the Sculpture, Contemporary Art Practice, and Moving Image departments as well as for the RCA’s School of Design.

Photo: Iwan Baan, image courtesy Royal College of Art

The 15,500-square-meter (167,000-square-foot) campus also sought to aid the shift in the 185-year-old institution's postgraduate offerings towards a more strengthened set of STEAM programs, which is seen in the addition of a new tech-centric eight-story research center, robotics hangar, and a center for enterprise, entrepreneurship, incubation and business support called InnovationRCA.

Photo: Iwan Baan, image courtesy Royal College of Art

Writing in the Guardian today, critic Oliver Wain...

Qatar will receive three new museums from a trio of Pritzker Prize winners

2022-03-28T19:24:00-04:00

Three new major museum projects were announced yesterday at the 2022 Doha Forum in Qatar.

Qatar Museums Chairperson Sheikha Al Mayassa bint Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani was on hand to premiere the new initiative, which is meant to kick off the next phase in the country’s development goals propelled by a continued investment in the cultural economy.

Al Mayassa was joined by two-thirds of the architects for the museums: Jacques Herzog of Herzog & de Meuron, who will design the Lusail Museum, and ELEMENTAL director Alejandro Aravena, whose firm will be responsible for the Art Mill. OMA’s Rem Koolhaas, who will design the new Qatar Auto Museum, was the lone holdout.

The Art Mill represents the 21-year-old ELEMENTAL’s first foray into the museum typology. Envisioned as a fusion of performances spaces, contemporary art galleries, and dedicated areas for artist residency programs, what was formerly the site of a historic flour mill will now be transformed into an anchor for various Qatari c...

Herzog & de Meuron's exploration of the SongEun Art Space showcased possibilities of augmented reality technology

2022-03-18T14:31:00-04:00

Seoul’s latest cultural mainstay was a recent subject of an introspective investigation with help from its creator Herzog & de Meuron.

The Swiss firm returned to its debut Korean design with an augmented reality exhibition titled Exploring SongEun Art Space that uses physical and digital models, drawings, sections, and printed images to give visitors a real insider's perspective on the creation and inner workings of the new 11-story museum.

Previously on Archinect: Seoul's newest art space opens in a triangular concrete shape from Herzog & de Meuron

With help from Swiss VR/AR specialists Bandara, the installation delved into the new building in an extraordinary high-tech way, displaying documentation that explored the design and construction process from the initial conception in Basel to the physical realization last September in Seoul's Gangnam district. It consisted of seven augmented reality stations, where different images in the room triggered videos, models, and other media f...

Prominent architecture firms voice intent to suspend work in Russia as statements of solidarity with Ukraine continue

2022-03-02T17:50:00-05:00

As the walls of the international community begin to cave in on Vladimir Putin and his acolytes in response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine, more prominent architecture and design firms have joined the effort to isolate Moscow from the rest of the world economically.

The past 24 hours saw the addition of David Chipperfield and Zaha Hadid Architects to the list of practices that includes BIG, UNStudio, MVRDV, Herzog & de Meuron, Diller Scofidio + Renfro, and Foster + Partners in either refusing to continue work on ongoing projects or issuing statements of solidarity which have resounded across the professional design world.

“As a practice, we are affected twofold. Our projects in Ukraine have sadly been put on hold by the atrocities,” began the statement published Monday by MVRDV. “Right after the start of the invasion, we began contacting our Ukrainian friends and partners in support, and we try to remain in touch. They are brave, and they are experiencing incredible hardship. We h...

A Canadian homebuilder's $100 million gift brought HdM's Vancouver Art Gallery expansion project back from the dead

2022-01-31T13:58:00-05:00

After years of stops and starts, triumphant announcements and long silences – there is finally momentum, once again. Gallery officials are meeting regularly with the city, city hall is re-examining the term of the lease agreement, a public open house is scheduled for March, and shovels could be in the ground next year. All it took was a single private donation – of $100-million.

The firm’s repeatedly revised design was originally set to be its first commission in the country for an expansion effort that has been mulled since first being announced in 2014. Vancouver Art Gallery has been balking at the effort since the early 2000s without naming a winner. Herzog & de Meuron's latest version includes a new woven copper facade and was developed with input from four Indigenous artist design consultants representing the native communities of Vancouver.

The gift from philanthropist home building magnate Michael Audain was announced on November 4th and came with quite a few of his own design “suggestions” that reportedly touched on the vertical orientation of the floor plan and the original martial of the now-remade facade. The museum is still looking for about $160 million (CAD) in funding to complete the $400 million capital project, but supporters are optimistic that Audain’s gift has steered the project back on track for a 2023 groundbreaking and realization s...

HdM's Tour Triangle: Contractor selected as construction is set to formally begin

2022-01-25T16:58:00-05:00

An update has come in one of the most controversial developments in recent Parisian history: The Belgian construction group Besix has been announced as the contractor for the Herzog & de Meuron-designed Tour Triangle in the 15th arrondissement’s Parc des Expositions.

Global Construction Review is now reporting that the Brussels-based concern has been tapped by developers Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield (URW) to lead the building and construction of the €670 million ($757 million) mixed-use tower. The company can now add the project to its list of high-profile developments that includes the Uptown Tower in Dubai and Pierre Fakhoury's record-setting F Tower development in the Ivory Coast.

Previously on Archinect: Herzog & de Meuron's Tour Triangle is set to break ground in Paris despite a last-minute effort to stop it

The news comes about two months after a final attempt by local politicians to halt groundbreaking on the fraught 42-story development. Detractors have been pushing for years to...

Herzog & de Meuron-designed hospital clad in terracotta revealed for UC San Francisco

2022-01-04T12:56:00-05:00

UCSF has released images of their proposed Helen Diller Medical Center, designed by Herzog & de Meuron in collaboration with HDR Architecture. The 15-story hospital will be constructed on UCSF’s Parnassus Heights campus, with 336 inpatient beds, diagnostic and treatment services, clinical support services, and public areas spread across the 900,000 square foot facility.

In addition to constructing a new hospital, the project will see the renovation of the existing Moffitt and Long hospitals, which when combined with the new building, give the campus a total of 682 inpatient beds. The upgraded capacity is in response to the region’s rising healthcare needs, with 3000 patients turned away from the campus hospital in 2019 due to a lack of beds. The renovations are also part of an effort to bring the entire site in line with earthquake safety standards.

UCSF Helen Diller Medical Center. Image by Herzog & de Meuron

“In designing this hospital, we are re-imagining the space around it, c...

Herzog & de Meuron's Tour Triangle is set to break ground in Paris despite a last-minute effort to stop it

2021-11-19T17:03:00-05:00

The debate surrounding Herzog & de Meuron's Tour Triangle is picking up this week amidst news that the €670 million ($757 million) project will begin construction within the next month in spite of a torrent of backlash that has beset the development since its announcement in 2008.

As the plan moves forward, a last-minute effort has propped up among Parisians intent on making a final stand against the looming tower.

Located in the 15th arrondissement, the 42-story glass triangle would become the city’s third-tallest building outside of the city’s bifurcated La Défense business district. The mayor of the 15th (who compared the development to the Hydra of Lerna) lobbed a last-minute effort to postpone the plan at yesterday’s meeting of the Conseil de Paris, stating that an office building of its type is no longer necessary in the post-pandemic economy, which resulted in a verbal back-and-forth between himself and socialist mayor Anne Hidalgo, who has been an ardent supporter of the pr...

Jacques Herzog previews the M+ Museum and more of HdM's upcoming projects

2021-11-02T12:48:00-04:00

Architecture is the art of facts. You do a building or you don’t, and if you do a building, do it right. We shouldn’t have a moralistic standpoint. But make things so that they work, they are sustainable and they are beautiful.

The 71-year-old architect discussed the highly-anticipated M+ Museum which finally opens this month in Hong Kong's West Kowloon Cultural District. The Guardian also talked to Herzog about an upcoming library project for the state of Israel as well as his new headquarters for drugmaker AstraZeneca.

“Architecture continues to be a great business because it’s all about life,” he told the Observer's architecture critic, Rowan Moore, saying that he spent the pandemic contemplating "actually what I can do. I’m not so young any more. What do I want to do and how helpful can my business be in that endeavour? I’m pretty happy, but I’m also somehow scared of how vulnerable the world has become.”

The new museum opens on November 12th.

MKM Museum Küppersmühle reopens after a Herzog & de Meuron-backed expansion

2021-09-27T17:37:00-04:00

One of Germany’s premier collections of modern art is now reopened in the city of Duisburg thanks to an expansion project from Herzog & de Meuron.

Featuring an additional 2,500 square meters (26,900 square feet) of exhibition and gallery space, the firm expanded on its original 1999 reworking of an abandoned 19th-century mill located at the confluence between the Rhone and Rhine rivers about an hour north of Cologne.

The added space will house the museum’s Ströher Collection in a new four-story building connected to the existing mill through a series of bridges that run through the surviving grain silos, which provide brilliantly lit terracotta interiors and activate the entirety of the historic structure.

Three separate elevations help define the brick volume situated amongst existing inner harbor buildings and p...

Herzog & de Meuron's new M+ museum in Hong Kong finally gets an opening date

2021-09-09T08:00:00-04:00

An opening date has been set for the long-anticipated M+ Museum in Hong Kong after years of delays.

The $750 million project from Herzog & de Meuron is being heralded as Asia’s largest and most significant center for contemporary visual art and was seen as the centerpiece of Hong Kong’s West Kowloon Cultural District when it was first announced in 2003.

Construction wrapped earlier in the year on the 700,000-square-foot facility which houses a 6,400-piece collection of contemporary art, media, and architecture across 33 galleries with a host of other amenities that includes three cinema-sized theaters and a research center.

Featuring a terracotta-clad facade with a south-facing LED display, the museum forms a T-shape with a podium and tower that stands over a triple-height installation space meant to give visitors a vertical orientation to the new...

Herzog & de Meuron reveals new images of its first-ever UK residential tower

2021-07-27T08:00:00-04:00

Photos for the new One Park Drive development in London’s Canary Wharf neighborhood have been released this week by Herzog & de Meuron. The project represents the Swiss firm’s second major development in the city following the cancellation of a planned football stadium last year and the completion of the Tate Modern’s Switch House in 2016.

Image courtesy of Herzog & de Meuron/Lee Mawdsley

The 58-story residential tower distinguishes itself from the surrounding neighborhood in a cylindrical form containing 484 apartment units whose function is contrasted by the area’s predominantly commercial spaces. 22 floors of blocky stepped one- and two-bedroom apartments sit atop a rounded base which houses 9 floors of curving balcony-lined apartments and an arrangement of amenities including a built-in library and cinema space. Another 25 floors of larger apartments top out the building with balconies included. Seven duplex apartments will be installed on the top two floors later this year.

Ima...

Seoul's newest art space opens in a triangular concrete shape from Herzog & de Meuron

2021-07-15T14:04:00-04:00

A new home for South Korea’s energy giant ST International is nearing completion in Seoul, adding to the city’s reputation as an emerging art capital. The combination museum and corporate headquarters heralds a new vogue museum building in pronounced geometric form.

Herzog & de Meuron are behind the new SongEun Art Space that will double as an exhibition space for the 32-year-old foundation and the official home of the Korean conglomerate formerly known as Samtan. The Art Space has held dedicated space inside one of ST-owned properties since its inception in 2002.

The 8,000-square-meter new building forms a perfect right angle at the intersection of two busy main thoroughfares in Seoul’s Chung Dam district, its simple geometry serving as a complement to the optic new flagship for fashion house Juun.J that opened nearby in September 2019.

Wood-grained concrete forms an uneven 11-story scalene above-ground envelope that conceals the foundation’s subterranea...

Herzog & de Meuron's Feltrinelli Porta Volta photographed by Bahaa Ghoussainy

2021-07-09T13:06:00-04:00

Architectural photographer Bahaa Ghoussainy has published his documentation of Milan's Feltrinelli Porta Volta, a recent Herzog & de Meuron project aimed at providing the Fondazione Giangiacomo Feltrinelli with a spacious new home. The restored Porta opened in 2016 after a historical analysis and rehabilitation of the 16th-century site by the Swiss-based firm.

Ghoussainy's photographs capture perfectly the symmetry and bifurcation of the new buildings while highlighting their ability to communicate the themes of historical reverence and consistency central to the project's vision.

You can read more about Ghoussainy in our 2018 'In Focus' interview with the photographer.

Allianz Arena will not display rainbow colors in support of LGBTQ activists following a controversial UEFA ruling

2021-06-22T21:01:00-04:00

UEFA has rejected a call from activists to convert the Allianz Arena in Munich into a rainbow-covered light scheme in unison with protests ahead of Germany’s final European Championship group game with Hungary that it is slated to host on Wednesday.

The city council’s proposal was rejected by Europe’s governing soccer body after a ruling cited the effort’s political motivations as the reasoning behind the denial.

Activists are looking to shed light on the recent passage of a bill they say is meant to target LGBTQ education in Hungary’s public school system. The Herzog and de Meuron-designed stadium would have joined other Bundesliga pitches across the country in a show of solidarity that will now be expressed by fans inside the stadium, at Town Hall, and on the city’s nearby Olympiaturm as support for the protest grows.

Aerial photo of Allianz Arena. Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons user Chumwa.

“We in Munich certainly won’t let ourselves be discouraged from sending a clear signal to...