Herzog and de Meuron: The Latest Architecture and News

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.

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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.

Continue reading for more.

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.

Architects: Herzog & de Meuron Basel Ltd., Basel Location: Basel, Switzerland Client: MCH Messe Switzerland AG, Basel, Switzerland Project Area: 141,000 m2 Construction Period: 2010 – 2013 Photographs: Courtesy of MCH Swiss Exhibition (Basel) Ltd.

Continue reading for more images, renderings and information.

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When we spotted the news on ArchRecord of 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.  

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.

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.”

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.

The Architecture City Guide: Barcelona list and corresponding map after the break.

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!

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).

More following the break.

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.

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.

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.

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.