Jacques Herzog, Ai Weiwei and Pierre de Meuron © Courtesy of Serpentine Gallery

Today, the Serpentine Gallery announced the team that will design the twelfth edition of the Serpentine Gallery Pavilion, a special edition that will be part of the  London 2012 Festival, the culmination of the Cultural Olympiad.

Every year the gallery invites a renowned international architects who has not built yet in the UK, to design a temporary pavilion that hosts public activities in at the Gallery’s lawn, in London’s Hyde Park between June and October 2012. The list of architects for the past editions includes several Pritzker laureates. More info of this program at our Serpentine Gallery Pavilion infographic.

This years teams includes Pritzker laureate architects Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron, and Chinese artist Ai Weiwei (runner up of TIME’s 2011 Person of the Year). The trio has worked together in projects such as ORDOS 100 in the Mongolian desert and the Beijing National Stadium for the 2008 Olympic Games. As a trio they don’t have any built projects in the UK, but Herzog & de Meuron have been involved in several, including the Tate Modern renovation and its current expansion.

Their design will explore the  hidden history of the previous installations (more info), with eleven columns under the lawn of the Serpentine, representing the past pavilions and a twelfth column supporting a floating platform roof 1.5 metres above ground. Taking an archaeological approach, the architects have created a design that will inspire visitors to look beneath the surface of the park as well as back in time across the ghosts of the earlier structures.

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© Duccio Malagamba

Duccio Malagamba shared with us his photographic work on Herzog and de Meuron’s Museum der Kulturen. His photos not just provide us with more images on this exciting design, but allow us to really appreciate the stunning details and architectural elements shown such as its historic walls and beautiful rooftop of irregular folds.

After two years of reconstruction, refurbishment and expansion, it recently re-opened in early September of this year and continues to be one of Europe’s great ethnographic museums. More photos by Duccio Malagamba can be viewed after the break. read more »

© Jose Campos

Slowly, but surely, Hamburg’s beautiful Elbe Philharmonic Hall is nearing completion (according to the Philharmonic’s construction website, the roof construction that seals the large concert hall has just been completed!).  We shared some photos of the concert hall’s innovative and iconic skin system when we visited Hamburg earlier this year, and recently, Jose Campos shared his latest set with us.

Check out Campos’ photos and learn more about the completed ceiling construction after the break. read more »

Photo by ifmuth - http://www.flickr.com/photos/ifmuth/

The recession that began in 2007 technically ended in 2009, but you wouldn’t know it from visiting Detroit. The capital of U.S. auto manufacturing has been hit particularly hard, and stories of its plight during the economic downturn abound. Less reported, though, are the ideas and proposals put forth to return this city to its former glory. The urban renewal projects proposed are some of the latest in a long line of design projects that attempt to bring renewed prosperity and well being to the downtrodden sections of cities throughout the world. More on urban renewal and Detroit after the break. read more »

© Herzog & de Meuron

VINCI-FAYAT consortium has been selected as preferred bidder for the ‘Grand Stade de Bordeaux’ which includes designs by Herzog & de Meuron and landscape design by Michel Desvigne. Slated for completion in 2015 the ‘Grand Stade de Bordeaux’ will be located within the city’s existing green belt district.  The design provides a natural sense of fluidity, with easy approachability beginning with the multiple staircases at all points of the stadium.  Never loosing site of the stadiums location a large focus of the concept incorporates the surrounding environment blending with the building, as reflected in the concave roof which is supported by a series of spindly white columns, appearing like a forest of birch trees.  Home field to the FC Girondins de Bordeaux, the ‘Grand Stade de Bordeaux’ will also host a variety of cultural events.

Additional renderings and a video can be found following the break. Be sure to take a look.

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© Michael Stavaridis

Perched sixty feet in the air like a floating cloud and open to the Miami Beach sky, the Alchemist boutique is a hovering glass box inserted into the fifth floor of a parking structure designed by Herzog and de Meuron. Inside, its reflective materials capture the colors and energy of the surrounding environment and make it is visible from many vantage points throughout Miami Beach.

Architect: Rene Gonzalez Architect
Location: 1111 Lincoln Rd, Miami Beach, Florida, USA
Project Area: 1,726 sqf
Photographs: Michael Stavaridis

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© Karen Cilento

On a recent visit to Hamburg, we were able to see the progress of Herzog & de Meuron’s grand concert hall [check out our previous coverage here].  Although construction costs continue to escalate [almost 70 million Euro have been donated by private businesses for the project, and the project is well over its 240 million Euro proposed budget], once complete, it will be the highest inhabited building of Hamburg and bring even more life to the area’s harbor.

More images and more about the visit after the break. read more »

Courtesy of Diller Scofidio + Renfro

If you are a regular ArchDaily reader you know that we have been providing ongoing coverage of Eli Broad’s Broad Museum in Los Angeles. Nearly 120,000 sqf and $130 million dollars, invitations were given to six top architects to submit designs for the new museum. Rem Koolhaas, Herzog and de Meuron, Christian de Portzamparc, Ryue Nishizawa and Kazuyo Sejima, Diller Scofidio + Renfro and Foreign Office Architects competed and in August we informed you that Diller Scofidio + Renfro garnered the commission.

Today, the design for the Broad Museum has been released. Situated adjacent to Frank Gehry’s Walt Disney Concert Hall and Arata Isozaki’s Museum of Contemporary Art, the museum has become a key part of the Grand Avenue redevelopment project that has been losing steam.

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Zaha Hadid's Tondonia Vina Pavilion

“How Wine Became Modern: Design + Wine 1976 to Now” is a brand new exhibit at the San Francisco Modern Museum of Art.  Co-created and designed by Diller Scofidio + Renfro, the exhibit was organized by Henry Urbach, SFMOMA’s Helen Hilton Raiser Curator of Architecture and Design.  Bringing attention to the wine industry and its integration with the latest artists, designers and architects the exhibit will be on display at SFMOMA until April. A main part of the exhibit is featuring the architectural spaces that house the wine making process, tastings, museums, etc.  Some big name architects who have developed designs for cutting-edge wineries include: Zaha Hadid, Frank Gehry, Norman Foster, Herzog and de Meuron, Renzo Piano and Alvaro Siza.

Mr. Urbach stated that the idea stemmed “from an observation and curiosity about why there was so much activity around wine in various design fields. There are probably a score of world famous architects who have done wineries in the last fifteen years and they’re not doing dairy farms or orange juice bottling plants.”

Here at ArchDaily we have featured many great wineries.  Be sure to take a look at  Zaha Hadid’s Tondonia Vina Pavilion, Norman Foster’s Faustino Winery, as well as AD Wineries Roundup I and Roundup II.

Architects: Diller Scofidio + Renfro
Principals-in-Charge: Elizabeth Diller, Ricardo Scofidio and Charles Renfro
Project Leader: Ilana Altman
Project Manager: David Allin
Project Team: Kumar Atre, Donna Pallotta, Jose Vidalon and Chris Hillyard

© Angelika Warmuth/DPA

Continuing our coverage of Herzog and de Meuron’s Elbe Philharmonic Hall, we just found some interesting news regarding the construction site.  Currently around 80 meters high, the music hall still has a few years of construction left.  As huge cranes rise high above the building, Michael Batz, a scenographer, has taken advantage of the cranes and turned an ordinary construction site into a tourist attraction. Usually, people come to see a finished building – yet Batz’s idea of covering the cranes with blue LEDs creates a new kind of attraction.

Check out more images of the blue cranes, and a close up shot of the skin after the break.

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Earlier this year we featured Herzog & de Meuron’s VitraHaus in Weil am Rhein, Germany. Now, we share with you this amazing video by Pedro Kok, a brazilian architectural photographer whose incredible photos can be seen in our Flickr pool.

VitraHaus © Duccio Malagamba

In my opinion, Herzog & de Meuron has been one of the few practices pushing new forms on architecture. They always start with something vernacular, extracting its inner essence and materializing it into something new that you will immediately understand by looking at the building (or the renders). A dialog between art and the current state of our society, embodied on industrial facilities, residential projects, mixed use complexes.

Their book “Herzog & de Meuron: Natural History” is a must.

We now bring you a special on Herzog & de Meuron, with photos by  Barcelona-based photographer Duccio Malagamba (previously featured on our AD Photographers section).

Eleven works by the Swiss practice after the break:

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Expected to be completed in 2013, Herzog & de Meuron’s new redevelopment project in Porta Volta, Milan will include the headquarters for the Fondazione Giangiacomo Feltrinelli.  The Feltrinelli Group considers the site as an ideal environment for the foundation’s multiple activities and the overall masterplan for Porta Volta will consist of the Fondazione, two new office buildings, and a generous green area.   “This undertaking by the Feltrinelli Group has an important urban dimension in that it strengthens and reinforces the city.”

© Herzog & de Meuron

More about the project and more images after the break.

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© Herzog & de Meuron

The conceptual master plan for the Milan World Exposition 2015 resulted from the teamwork of five architects: Jacques Herzog, Mark Rylander, Ricky Burdett, Stefano Boeri, and William McDonough.  Working with the theme “feeding the planet, energy for life”, the exposition will be a planetary botanical garden that will “feed Milan literally, spiritually and intellectually.”  The architects created the framework for the exposition and organized an orthogonal bridge that contains an agrofood park and is surrounded by water ways.

More about the new concept after the break. read more »