Herzog and de Meuron

      map of works

(b. Basel, Switzerland 1950)

Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron

"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

"Two architects have been chosen to share the 2001 Pritzker Architecture Prize, Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron of Basel, Switzerland. The two men, both born in Basel in 1950, have nearly parallel careers, attending the same schools and forming a partnership architectural firm, Herzog & de Meuron in 1978.

"Perhaps their highest profile project was attained with the completion last year of the conversion of the giant Bankside power plant on the Thames River in London to a new Gallery of Modern Art for the Tate Museum. It has been widely praised by their peers and the media.

"In the United States, they have completed a winery in the Napa Valley of California that utilizes a mortarless wall of stones encased in wire mesh, and are currently building the Kramlich Residence and Media Collection in that same region. They have three other projects in work in the United States Ñ the headquarters of Prada in New York, the New de Young Museum in San Francisco which is scheduled for completion in 2004, and the Extension for the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, scheduled for completion in 2005.

"They have projects in England, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Japan, and of course, in their native Switzerland. There they have built residences, several apartment buildings, libraries, schools, a sports complex, a photographic studio, museums, hotels, railway utility buildings as well as office and factory buildings.

"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.

"While these unusual construction solutions are certainly not the only reason for Herzog and de Meuron being selected as the 2001 Laureates", Pritzker Prize 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"."

— Pritzker Prize Award Announcement

"[The work of Herzog and de Meuron 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."

— Rafael Moneo, AV monograph on Herzog and de Meuron, 1996

Details

Recipient of the Pritzker Architecture Prize, 2001.

"Beijing Bird's Nest - Engineering" by Brian Libby, ArchitectureWeek No. 394, 2008.0827, pB1.1.

"Beijing Bird's Nest - Architecture" by Brian Libby, ArchitectureWeek No. 393, 2008.0820, pB1.1.

"Dominus in Depth" by Kevin Matthews, ArchitectureWeek No. 339, 2007.0620, pD1.1.

"San Francisco's New de Young", by Lisa Ashmore, ArchitectureWeek No. 277, 2006.0301, p1.

"Herzog and de Meuron Stirling Prize", by Don Barker, ArchitectureWeek No. 167, 2003.1015, pN1.1.

"Herzog and de Meuron Pritzker Prize", by ArchitectureWeek, ArchitectureWeek No. 44, 2001.0404, pN1.1.

Gerhard Mack. Herzog & De Meuron 1978-1988 : The Complete Works. Vol 1. Birkhauser (Architectural), October 1997. ISBN 3764356162. — Available at Amazon.com

Rowan Moore, Raymund Ryan, Adrian Hardwicke, Gavin Stamp. Building Tate Modern : Herzog & De Meuron Transforming Giles Gilbert Scott. Tate Gallery Publications, 2000. ISBN 1854372920. — Available at Amazon.com

Wilfried Wang. Herzog & De Meuron. Birkhauser (Architectural), December 2000. ISBN 3764356170. — Available at Amazon.com

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2001 Pritzker Laureates - Gallery of Works — At the official site.

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