2/11/2024 0 Comments Tate modern the tanks 2016 film![]() The Switch House will add about sixty per cent more space for art and visitors, and not only does this make possible new galleries in a greater variety of shapes and sizes, some more intimate than others, but the new development also brings with it greater ease of access and improved flow of movement. A previous Editorial for this Magazine posed a pertinent question for museums: ‘Is bigger necessarily better?’1 In the case of Tate Modern the answer is undeniably yes. This Editorial has been written before the internal arrangement of this new building, and its displays, have been made public. There are aspects of the Switch House, most noticeably in the handling of brick (Fig.III), which have no precedent in Herzog & de Meuron’s previous work and which required greater than usual precision in the process of construction. At the summit a public terrace offers a 360 degree panoramic view of London. Long horizontal windows slice across the new building from top to bottom, but stop and start irregularly, adding a syncopated beat to the building’s external appeal. Viewed from the west (Fig.I), it nudges up to the older building, almost echoing in height the former power station’s huge central chimney on the north side, while a single tall thin window in its west wall echoes those that accentuate the sheer height of Tate Modern’s riverside façade. Instead the building folds in and out, twists and leans, yet retains a coherent whole. ![]() ![]() ![]() But Herzog & de Meuron’s pyramidal tower both commands attention and counters expectations, denying us neat geometry as well as the more abrupt disjunctions associated with Frank Gehry. These wrap a perforated lattice around the building, its chequerboard effect allowing these parts of the building to be pierced by light during the daytime and to emit a glow from artificial light at night (Figs.II and IV), a dual role similar to that performed by the great lantern surmounting Frederick Gibberd’s Catholic cathedral in Liverpool. The long-awaited extension – the Switch House, which sits like its eponymous predecessor on the former Power Station’s cylindrical underground tanks – has risen to its ten-storey height and been elegantly clad with 336,000 bricks. ![]() THIS MONTH MARKS an important moment in the history of Tate Modern. ![]()
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