Building Tate Modern: Herzog & De Meuron [Paperback]

Rowan Moore (Author), Raymund Ryan (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1854372920 | ISBN-13: 978-1854372925 | Publication Date: May 1, 2000

Standing on the south bank of the Thames opposite the dome of St. Paul's Cathedral, Sir Giles Gilbert Scott's vast brick edifice, with its tower of 325 feet, dominates the scenery and ranks among the most imposing structures of central London. Yet, after its closure in 1981, the Bankside Power Station was rendered invisible to the public eye by its redundancy and the frequent threat of demolition. The reopening of Bankside in May 2000 as London's first national gallery of modern and contemporary art restores the grandeur of Scott's design and regenerates a much neglected area of the city.

The conversion to art gallery by the Swiss architects Herzog and de Meuron is marked by its extreme simplicity, at once enhancing the physical presence of the original architecture and completely transforming its derelict and impenetrable interior into an accessible, light-filled exhibition center. The tremendous affinity of contemporary art with ex-industrial settings has inspired a design that retains the monumental scale of the Turbine Hall and skillfully offers a range of spaces for widely differing types of art on the multiple floors of the Old Boiler House.

This publication follows the story of the Bankside project and presents a stunning photographic account of every stage of its transformation. Including an interview with Jacques Herzog and Nicholas Serota, director of the Tate, it provides a detailed analysis of Herzog and de Meuron's design and redefines the Tate's role within contemporary culture.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Rowan Moore is architecture critic for the Evening Standard. AUTHORBIO: Raymund Ryan is lecturer at the Dublin School of Architecture. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 200 pages
• Publisher: Tate (May 1, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1854372920
• ISBN-13: 978-1854372925
• Product Dimensions: 9.8 x 11.1 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,319,858 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A Testimony For a Humble International Modern Gallery, July 25, 2001

By 

Ping Lim (Christchurch) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Building Tate Modern: Herzog & De Meuron (Paperback)

If readers simply want to have a general overview of the making of Tate Modern Gallery, perhaps, this book is suffice. Should the readers be curious of cogs & wheels that create the Tate Modern machine, then, there's another superb book that shouldn't be missed. It is called "The Power of Art" written by Karl Sabbagh. Perhaps, these 2 books should be combined as a total reading experience so that there's nothing is amissed. The deficiency of "The Power of Art" is that it contains too few pictures but the shortcoming is succumbed by the author's inquisitive observations & countless interviews with all pertinent professionals, which were all recorded down in his confident but fluid writing style. I enjoyed every moment reading about the showdowns among architects (Tadao Ando, Renzo Piano, Herzog & de Meuron, Rem Koolhas, Rafael Moneo, David Chipperfield during the competition stage) & subsequently, between Herzog & Norman Foster regarding linking the Millennium Bridge with the Tate Modern itself, showdowns between architects & engineers, headaches & traumas of completing the project on time & on budget, unforseen circumstances which were never expected in the scheduling, clashes of personalities, inner politicking, different mindset between professionals & builders, reality is different from the model set, comparisons between it & the Paul Getty Centre, & Bilbao Guggenheim, how the presentation was going to flow, the election of the new gallery director, the parody or mannerism of Herzog & de Meuron (the firm), the PR exercise conducted between the Gallery & its surrounding neighbours, the selection of a new landscape architect Kienast Vogt Partner, the professionals' obsession with toilets, & so forth. "Building Tate Modern" however, ignored the "tasty" bit by simply informed the readers briefly of every & each process. Pictures took precedent in this presentation & the quality was adequate. The index for the building plans, nevertheless, was too small for naked eyes. What "Building Tate Modern" exceeds Karl Sabbagh's book is mostly the allocation of one chapter to explain Bankside Power Station & its architect, Giles Gilbert Scott before it was finally converted. These 2 books are 2 different kettle of fish together & therefore, it's impossible to say which one precedes the other. Suffice to say that both publications tried to do justice to the Modern Gallery by presenting it in formats which authors & publishers deemed best. An experience not to be missed.