Herzog & de Meuron
Both born in Basel in 1950 and graduates from Zurich = s ETH, Jacques Herzog
and Pierre de Meuron started their career with small works where traditional
forms and materials took on new meanings. In little over two decades of work,
their studio B which Harry Gugger and Christine Binswanger joined as associates
B has already produced over two hundred projects and twenty works that are amongst
the most significant of the last quarter of the 20th century, and for which they
have deserved the Pritzker Architecture Prize, awarded to them in 2001. The Frei
photographic studio (1981-1982), the Italian stone house in Tavole (1982-1988),
the apartments on Basel = s Schützenmattstrasse (1984-1994), the warehouse
for Ricola in Laufen (1984-1987) or the signal box of Basel = s railway station
(1989-1994) are realizations through which they have been able to define a A
Swiss @ way of understanding architecture, whose main appeal lies in the contrast
between the laconicism of forms and the eloquence of matter. Designing skins
that are more and more unusual B the screen printed glass of the second storage
building for Ricola in Mulhouse (1992-1993) and of the hospital pharmacy in Basel
(1995-1999), the concrete stamped with photographic printing techniques in the
library of Eberswalde (1994-1999) or the basalt gabions of the Dominus Winery
of Napa Valley B , the Swiss have shown that the research into the physical quality
of materials is an endless source of aesthetic expression. After the huge impact
of their work of transformation of an old electric power station on the banks
of the River Thames into the headquarters of the Tate Modern in London, or of
their Parisian apartment buildings on Rue des Suisses, Herzog & de Meuron
have completed almost simultaneously the Laban Dance Centre, also in the British
capital, the Prada store in Tokyo and the Schaulager building in Basel. The National
Stadium of Beijing, a competition they have recently won, or the Allianz Arena
of Munich, already under construction, are just a few of their international
projects, while in Spain they are building the Cultural Centre Óscar Domínguez
in Santa Cruz de Tenerife, where they shall also recover the city = s seafront,
and the main building for the Forum 2004 in Barcelona, and they have carried
out the project for the conversion of another power station by the Paseo del
Prado into the
