The city of Colmar, France is undertaking the expansion of The Unterlinden Museum with the annexation of an Art Nouveau building that once housed the city’s municipal baths. The 1906 building stands just meters away from the current museum. Its addition will bring the current museum to an area of 8,000 square meters, which will allow works that are currently stored in the museum’s vaults to be displayed to the public. The design team is led by Herzog & de Meuron and is scheduled for completion in September, 2013.
Earlier this month, Roche held a foundation stone-laying ceremony for their new office building that is currently being constructed in Basel, Switzerland. Designed by the Basel-based architecture practice of Herzog & de Meuron, the 178-meter-tall tapering structure will be formed by superimposed floor slabs that narrow as the high rise ascends. Its simple shape and predominantly white color scheme will anchor itself within the urban setting of Basel and become one of the few high rises scattered throughout the city’s skyline.
Continue after the break for more images and information.
As we announced back in February, Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron and their Chinese collaborator Ai Weiwei will design this year’s Serpentine Gallery Pavilion at Hyde Park in London, a special edition that will be part of the London 2012 Festival, the culmination of the Cultural Olympiad. This will be the trio’s first collaborative built structure in the UK.
Back then, it was announced that their design will explore the hidden history of the previous installations (see all the previous pavilions in our infographic), with eleven columns under the lawn of the Serpentine, representing the past pavilions and a twelfth column supporting a floating platform roof 1.4 metres above ground, which looks like a reflecting water-like surface in the renderings. The plan of the pavilion is based on a mix of the 11 previous pavilions’ layouts, pavilions that are represented as excavated foundations from which a new cork cladded landscape appears, as an archeological operation.
Since 2007, controversy has been stirring due to the rising costs and delayed schedule of Herzog & de Meuron’s Elbphilharmonie concert hall in Hamburg, Germany. Recent reports state the court has approved the city of Hamburg’s €40 million lawsuit against the primary contractor HochTief, who has stopped working in four areas of the €600 million project this past November. HochTief blames the architect due to differences in its plans.
The modernization of the Messe Basel is making progress. Developed by Basel architects Herzog & de Meuron on behalf of the MCH Group, the project aims renew the existing exhibition space and become a popular destination for pedestrians and foreign visitors. The new multifunctional exhibition building is scheduled for completion in 2013.
When we spotted the news on ArchRecordof a major delay for the Elbe Philharmonic, our hearts sank a little. We’ve been covering the building extensively during its construction period and have anxiously been awaiting its completion (a date that was pushed from 2010 to 2012, and, now, is uncertain). Yet, technical difficulties pertaining to the saddle roof structure are creating a tangle between the German contractor Hochtief and the Elbe Philharmonic, leading Hochtief to stop work on the glass facade, the steel roof support structure, the 82m-long escalator and the building services.
More about the halted construction after the break.
Earlier this week one of Europe’s great ethnographic museums, the Museum der Kulturen Basel, reopened its doors. Two years of reconstruction, refurbishment and expansion including a Herzog & de Meuron design for the historical walls was among the updates that it received. Their design is described as a ‘stunning crown for the historical walls: the beautiful rooftop of irregular folds fits harmoniously into the rooftops surrounding the cathedral’.
Director Anna Schmid commented, “Our innovative approach to life’s cultural dimensions makes them more accessible. We want to be a place for new encounters and inspiration.”
This week, with the help of our readers, our Architecture City Guide is headed to Beijing. Beijing has a range of architectural styles, but the three most prevalent are the traditional imperial style (the Forbidden City), the “Sino-Sov” style (boxy structures built between the 1950s and 70s), and lastly the explosion of a modern corporate style that is punctuated with Starchitect buildings like OMA’s CCTV TV Station HQ. We put together a list of 12 modern/contemporary buildings that we feel provides a good starting point. It is far from complete. There are dozens of other great buildings that are not our list, and we are looking to add to the list in the near future. Please add your favorites in the comment section below so we can add them on the second go around. Again thank you to all our readers who sent in their suggestions and photographs. The city guides would not be possible without your help.
To check out other cities visit our world map or our Architecture City Guide page. The Architecture City Guide: Beijing list and corresponding map after the break.
https://www.archdaily.com/162944/architecture-city-guide-beijingChristopher Henry
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.
This week, with the help of our readers, our Architecture City Guide is headed to Barcelona. We recently featured an engaging video where Wiel Arets half jokingly said Barcelona is fantastic but boring. He continued to say as soon as Sagrada Família is finished Barcelona is done; there is nothing left to do there (10:50). Arets can say what he wants about Barcelona supposedly being boring, but our city guide doesn’t reflect this. Barcelona is filled with fantastically expressive architecture that springs from its proud Catalan culture. It was impossible to feature all our readers suggestions in the first go around, and we did not even come close to including some of the most iconic building such as Casa Milà. Thus we are looking to add to our list of 24 in the near future. Further more there are so many fabulous buildings on the drawing board or under construction, i.e. the projects in the @22 district, we’ll most likely be updating this city guide for quite awhile, regardless of Sagrada Família’s completion.
Take a look at our list with the knowledge it is far complete and add to it in the comment section below.
This week we are taking our Architecture City Guide to South Beach. Miami’s architectural styles range from austere corporate architecture, as it has the largest concentration of international banks in the United States, to colorful and playful architecture that reflects its beach and Latin American culture. Architecture lovers can’t miss Miami Beach’s Art Deco District or its old Spanish heritage. We have put together a list of 12 contemporary buildings that range from a small park pavilion to the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts. There is plenty more to see in Miami so please add your “must not miss” in the comment section below.
Architecture City Guide: Miami list and corresponding map after the break!
https://www.archdaily.com/134012/architecture-city-guide-miamiChristopher Henry
This week our Architecture City Guide is headed to the city stars fall on. With a few notable exceptions, one can hardly be called a starchitect if s/he hasn’t designed something in Minneapolis. Since 2005 the starchitects that have fallen on this “City of Lakes” include Jean Nouvel, Herzog & de Mueron, César Pelli, Michael Graves, Steven Holl, and Frank Gehry. This is a surprising number for a city just north of 380,000 people. Few cities of this size could boast as much. What’s more our list of 12 is far from complete. There are many wonderful historic and contemporary buildings mixed in with the explosion of starchitecture. Please leave comments of buildings one should not miss when visiting Minneapolis.
Architecture City Guide: Minneapolis list and corresponding map after the break!
https://www.archdaily.com/127516/architecture-city-guide-minneapolisChristopher Henry
The 590ft (180m) proposed Herzog de Meuron design labeled ‘Triangle Tower’, has been in the spotlight over recent weeks after the cross-party council approved the tower’s protocol agreement. Opposing the recent approval, Green party members are eager to share their thoughts commenting that the “colossal” project is “yet another office block” according to party member Yves Contassot.
The controversy over the 40-story steel and glass building surely was anticipated; the French capital has had a 30+ year drought of buildings over 121ft. In 1977 a ban was put into place, shortly after the completion of the 689ft Tour Montparnasse, because Parisians feared that the city center would lose its existing urban fabric to skyscrapers similar to the Montparnasse.
To most Parisians the Montparnasse’s over exaggerated proportions and lack of character have left an uneasy feeling for future skyscraper development. Many citizens are not opposed to high-rise development, such as Olivier de Rohan Chabot member of Safeguard of French Art, however he has concerns, “Look at the Montparnasse Tower; it has crushed the hotel des Invalides (housing Napoleon’s tomb). The monument was built to be grandiose. But what has it become? A dwarf. The tower ridicules it. In this sense, it’s a veritable attack on the beauty of the capital” (as stated Le Figaro newspaper).
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.
This week we are featuring San Francisco for our Architecture City Guide series. Thank you to all of our readers for adding their can’t miss buildings last week. We hope to see your comments below this week too.
Follow the break for our San Francisco list and a corresponding map!
“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.
