TEMPO
TEMPO
INFLUENCE It is interesting that the same practice completed a modest museum renovation and extension, using ideas on simulation in Colmar in 2017, after which the previous year completing the second phase of a £260 million major museum extension in the Tate Modern Switch House, a vastly different project in scale and intent; but sharing similar themes. Both projects attempt to answer somewhat the two partners’ belief that “the middle class is disappearing” and the loss of possibilities of common ground, of cultural experiences shared by different people.43 The built project is a successful urban intervention which succeeds the sense of place before it. The role of the architect has been to sensitively improve the conditions of the site and architecture in a top down approach, considering the bottom up movement of the user and the way the project will be used, creating an attention to detail on both inside and outside spaces and this relationship. Jacques Herzog states that both a top down approach where control is maintained by management and the architect’s authority, collaborating with other specialists, and a bottom up consideration of the user experience are necessary for great architecture, whether the architecture is ideologically based or concept-based will be found to be successful only if, visitors use the built project. He also insists that a practice should always consider seriously the importance of public scale, including an inserted public space, even if not included in the brief. This allows for the people to use the space and make sure the building stays as an important part of the city, it is not something you can parametrically develop; it is part of your experience and knowledge.44
Fig. 105. Switch House bricks in facade
Fig. 107. Jamie Fobert Halle St Peter’s extension
Fig. 109. Caruso St. John’s Newport Street Gallery
DH JAMES CLARK
Fig. 106. O’Donnell + Tuomey LSE Student Centre
Fig. 108. David Chipperfield Neues Museum restoration, remarkable sensitivity to old
Fig. 110. Sergison Bates Workhops, Factory London
Fig. 101. Sketch, Switch House decorum, 336,000 bricks used in facades to simulate original infrastructure
Fig. 102. Sketch, Switch House external form, distorted pyramid tower form
Fig. 103. Sketch, Switch House urbanistic architecture, staircases as nodes, meeting points
Fig. 104. Sketch, Switch House urbanistic architecture, walkway as link between buildings
Peter Eisenmann argues that there is a fundamental difference philosophically in material between a northern and southern based education. Eisenmann is more influenced by Alberti, who argued that space has no colour, no material. Material is treated differently in the northern world, as opposed to spacium, the latin word in the Italian world, from architects like Alberti, Palladio, Moretti.45 Jacques states that the northern position is a romantic, holistic dream of bringing many themes together, fascinated by architects like Novalis, Pallasmaa rather than Nobert Schultz, a much more diluted version. He disagrees that space is purely an abstract phenomenon, as even Palladio needed finely treated material to make that space available. Rather, space and architecture is great when it reacts to the five senses, as a physical entity. He does not give value to the inherent material, but only to the holistic space. Jacques also reverts back to the importance of teacher over matters of northern and southern theory, in the foreground were Masters like Aldo Rossi and Lucius Bocart, left wing Communists, with Rossi adamant that a designer should do architecture and architects should express their criticism through the work themselves through their building, rather than writing. In the background were American Modernists and the New York architects, which were not explored as students but only until the 80s when they had created Herzog & de Meuron.46 As Jane Jacobs writes, ‘why have cities not, been identified, understood and treated as problems of organized complexity?’47 Architects, rather as Robert Venturi states, can act ‘by modifying or adding conventional elements to still other conventional elements they can, by a twist of context, gain a maximum of effect through a minimum of means. They can make us see the same things in a different way.’48 Typical museum restorations and extensions are being built with a real sensitive appreciation of their existing counterparts, working with the specifics of cultural history, using materials which do not pretend to be original, allowing the history to be celebrated. London practices are taking inspiration from northern European practices, two key London Swiss firms being, Caruso St. John and Sergison Bates. Much like Herzog & de Meuron, Sergison Bates’ architecture channels on an oscillation between a formal and tectonic emphasis, using established ordinary typologies through abstraction and distortion.49 Recently, the ‘style’ ‘new London vernacular’ generally favours the interplays of brick coursing, usually with a concrete or steel frame,50 perhaps in a search for a more holistic approach to material integrity, appealing to the senses, which may be lacking in development of the city. 43 The Guardian, 2016, <https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2016/may/15/herzog-demeuron-interview-tate-modern-switch-house-extension> (accessed 02.01.19) 44 Jacques Herzog & Peter Eisenman – A conversation moderated by Carson Chan (Cornell University), 2013, <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GdomEmYiw8g> (accessed 28.12.19) 45 ibid. 46 ibid. 47 Jacobs, J, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, New York, Modern Library Ed. 2011, p.567. 48 Venturi, R. Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture, New York, The Museum of Modern Art, 1966, p.44. 49 Davidovici, I, “Tectonic Presence” in Buildings. Sergison Bates Architects, Heinz Wirz, Lucerne: Quart Verlag, 2012, p.9–13. 50 Financial Times, Is a new architectural style emerging in London – Brickism? 2016, <https://www. ft.com/content/61ea50cc-d0d4-11e5-831d-09f7778e7377>
HERZOG & DE MEURON MUSEÉ UNTERLINDEN
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