To kick off our 21st-Century Architecture: 25 Years 25 Buildings sequence, we profile Herzog & de Meuron‘s Tate Trendy in London – essentially the most important constructing of the yr 2000.
The flip of the millennium prompted the opening of quite a few high-profile buildings, however none have had the lasting impression of Tate Modern, set inside an deserted energy station on the banks of the Thames in London.
Opened in Could 2000, the gallery was forward of its time with its give attention to reuse, rejuvenating London’s cultural providing and propelling Swiss studio Herzog & de Meuron to world fame.

The constructing essentially modified artwork gallery design. In the present day, establishments around the globe from Sydney to Doha wish to convert former industrial areas into distinctive galleries with the purpose of replicating the ability of Tate Trendy’s Turbine Corridor, however this wasn’t at all times the best way.
Again within the early Nineteen Nineties, London had no public establishment devoted to trendy artwork.
When Tate determined to determine a second London venue on account of its authentic residence operating out of area, it was broadly anticipated {that a} model new constructing can be commissioned.

Nevertheless, in what Herzog & de Meuron co-founder Pierre de Meuron later described as an “totally shocking and daring alternative”, the establishment selected an deserted energy station on London’s deeply retro and poorly related South Financial institution to be its new residence.
By that point Bankside Energy Station, designed by Battersea Power Station architect and telephone-box designer Giles Gilbert Scott, had lain empty for over a decade following its closure in 1981.

The Tate organisation, led by director Nicholas Serota, noticed the potential of the enormous constructing and its central location virtually instantly reverse St Paul’s Cathedral.
Tate organised a contest that attracted entries from the entire largest architects of the day, together with Rafael Moneo, David Chipperfield, Renzo Piano, Michael and Patty Hopkins, Nicholas Grimshaw, Alsop & Störmer, Future Systems, Tadao Ando and OMA.

Alongside this star-studded lineup was a little-known studio from Switzerland that had constructed little past a sequence of railway sign containers in Basel – Herzog & de Meuron, which – in fact – received the fee.
Among the many quite a few dramatic proposals that made radical additions to the ability station, Herzog & de Meuron’s appeared to do little or no to the constructing.
“Our design concerned few however highly effective interventions, with the purpose of retaining the economic character of the constructing as a lot as potential,” said De Meuron.
On the outside, Herzog & de Meuron’s design left the constructing wanting like an influence station, with solely a two-storey glazed extension added to the roof of the brick constructing. If the outside was radical in its subtlety, so too was the constructing’s gallery area.

The studio stacked the gallery’s core areas vertically in the primary constructing. A bookstore, espresso store and auditorium occupied the bottom two flooring, with galleries of varied sizes for the Tate’s everlasting assortment and non permanent exhibitions unfold throughout the third, fourth and fifth flooring and a bar and restaurant with views throughout London opened within the glazed extension on prime.
Nevertheless, it’s the former turbine corridor that’s the point of interest of the constructing and has come to outline Tate Trendy. The large, cathedral-like area, which stretches the total 150-metre size of the constructing and rises to its full top, was a dramatic new sort of area wherein to show artwork.
It’s, I would argue, the best new public area within the metropolis. It’s free to entry, it’s beneficiant and there’s a sense of the sudden Edwin Heathcote
The Turbine Corridor has since been host to quite a few attention-grabbing, site-specific artworks by main up to date artists together with Olafur Eliasson, Louise Bourgeois, Anish Kapoor, Rachel Whiteread, Ai Weiwei and Carsten Höller.
Described by Monetary Occasions structure critic Edwin Heathcote as the “finest new public space in the city”, the large plaza-like gallery modified how individuals considered up to date artwork and trendy artwork galleries.
An emblem of renewal in south London; the Tate Trendy, vivid star on the Thames’s different aspect Alan Using – New York Occasions
Visiting the Tate Trendy as we speak, it’s laborious to think about the scepticism confronted by Tate for the selection of website, architect and design. Like a lot of the perfect structure, it’s laborious to think about the constructing as the rest.
On its opening, the gallery was effectively obtained, with the New York Occasions calling it a “bright star on the Thames’s other side”.

The gallery was opened by the Queen in Could 2000 and shortly surpassed its anticipated annual customer figures of two million, with greater than 5 million guests within the first yr. Now, virtually 1 / 4 of a century after it opened, the Tate Trendy remains to be the world’s most visited up to date artwork museum – a testomony to each Tate’s and Herzog & de Meuron’s imaginative and prescient.
The New York Occasions’s evaluate went on to assert that Tate’s authentic gallery, renamed Tate Britain, “doesn’t wish to be upstaged by its youthful sibling”.
Wanting again now, it’s clear that it has been.
Did we get it proper? Was Herzog & de Meuron’s Tate Trendy essentially the most important constructing accomplished in 2000? Tell us within the feedback. We shall be operating a ballot as soon as all 25 buildings are revealed to find out essentially the most important constructing of the Twenty first century up to now.

This text is a part of Dezeen’s 21st-Century Architecture: 25 Years 25 Buildings sequence, which seems to be on the most vital structure of the Twenty first century up to now. For the sequence, we have now chosen essentially the most influential buildings from every of the primary 25 years of the century.
The illustration is by Jack Bedford and the images is by Margherita Spiluttini.
Twenty first-Century Structure: 25 Years 25 Buildings
2000: Tate Trendy by Herzog & de Meuron
This listing shall be up to date because the sequence progresses.