Herzog & de Meuron

Herzog & de Meuron
The original uploader was Miaers at English Wikipedia. Later versions were uploaded by Gee, CC BY 2.0

Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron have worked together since 1978. With Tate Modern in London, the Bird’s Nest in Beijing and the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg they have shown how material and façade can become the heart of architecture.

Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron were both born in 1950 in Basel and have been friends since childhood. They studied architecture at the ETH in Zürich, where they were among the students of Aldo Rossi. In 1978 they founded their practice in Basel. Since then they have worked closely with artists, and they were early interested in how façades and materials can give buildings a new expressiveness. The office has grown into a large international practice with several partners.

Among the early works is a signal box in Basel wrapped in copper bands. The Dominus Winery in California has walls of stones in wire cages, and the Ricola warehouse in Mulhouse has images printed on the glass. Tate Modern in London, 2000, made them world-famous. It was followed by Prada in Tokyo, the Allianz Arena in Munich, the de Young Museum in San Francisco, the National Stadium in Beijing, known as the Bird’s Nest, and the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg, a glass crystal on top of an old brick warehouse.

Herzog and de Meuron received the Pritzker Prize in 2001. Their work has no unified style but looks for new solutions for every task, often by working with surfaces, patterns and materials. They teach at the ETH, where they founded the research institute ETH Studio Basel. The practice is regarded as one of the most influential in the world.