This has been a project of immense complexity and ingenuity
Herzog & de Meuron for Tate
Contract value: Confidential
GIA: 23,600m²
The Tate Modern Switch House is a global icon for London. It adds a huge variety of new galleries and performance spaces to the already extensive volume of Tate Modern and allows the curatorial staff almost complete freedom in displaying art.
These spaces include a whole floor dedicated to educational facilities and outreach programmes, as well as staff and public cafés, an events space and a viewing deck.
The location of the museum required moving the original switch house, a huge piece of central electricity infrastructure, which was a major civil engineering project in its own right.
The chain mail brick facade is a completely new invention that allows the museum to bridge the gap between the contextual and the iconic. This has been a project of immense complexity and ingenuity.