Hasta La Ideas

(Photo: Matthu Placek)

With an opening sandwiched between Hurricane Sandy and Art Basel Miami Beach, the Parrish Art Museum’s breathtaking new home in Water Mill, New York may have escaped your notice. In fact, that’s one of its charms. The Herzog & de Meuron-designed building is a stealth beauty, an extruded artist’s studio that appears as a bleached, barn-like structure set at a jaunty angle to Montauk Highway. We’re declaring the new Parrish our 2012 Building of the Year and urge you to make a New Year’s resolution to pay a visit.

“When we started to work on this project, one of the first things we did was visit artists’ studios here on the East End of Long Island,” Ascan Mergenthaler, the Herzog & de Meuron senior partner who was in charge of the $26.2 million Parrish project, told us last month at the museum’s opening. “We took the artist’s studio—the classic one, a house-shaped typology with north-facing skylights–as a role model for all the galleries that you find in this building.”

Set on property that was once a tree nursery (now a meadow studded with native plants masterminded by the landscape whisperers at Reed Hilderbrand), the 34,400-square-foot building is formed by a pair of rough and cloudy concrete walls that span 600 feet across and are edged, ingeniously, in a ledge that provides abundant outdoor seating and a human scale to all of that rugged horizontality. “The scheme was very simple,” added Mergenthaler. “We only had to add a porch and covered space [which extends off of the café and around the back] so that the outdoor space also becomes an inhabited space. And then you blur the boundaries between outdoor and indoor. We thought that was very important.”
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This may look like a pair of barns in a field, but its actually the new home that Swiss architecture studio Herzog & de Meuron has completed for the Parrish Art Museum on Long Island (+ slideshow).

Herzog & de Meuron drew inspiration from the archetypal house to create the two gabled structures that comprise the building, which is reminiscent of the stacked volumes the architects created for the VitraHaus furniture gallery in Germany.

Above: photograph is by Matthu Placek

“Our design for the Parrish Art Museum is a reinterpretation of a very genuine Herzog & de Meuron typology, the traditional house form,”  said Jacques Herzog. “What we like about this typology is that it is open for many different functions, places and cultures. Each time this simple, almost banal form has become something very specific, precise and also fresh.”

Galleries and other rooms are arranged in two parallel rows beneath the shallow-pitched roofs, while a long corridor is sandwiched between to create a run of ten sub-divisible exhibition spaces at the centre.

“All galleries have large north-facing and small south-facing skylights, which fill the spaces with ever-changing daylight and allow direct views to the sky and the clouds passing by,” said Herzog & de Meuron senior partner Ascan Mergenthaler.

Overhanging eaves create sheltered terraces around the building’s perimeter, including a cafe terrace that the gallery hopes to use for events, workshops and performances.

Above: photograph is by Matthu Placek

Chairs and tables designed by Konstantin Grcic furnish this terrace and offer visitors a place to look out across the surrounding meadows.

Above: photograph is by Matthu Placek

The new building doubles the size of the museum’s previous Southampton home on Jobs Lane, where the arts institution had been based since it was first established in 1897.

Above: photograph is by Matthu Placek

The galleries open with a special exhibition celebrating the work of artist Malcolm Morley, while the permanent collection will contain artworks from the nineteenth century onwards.

The architects revealed the finalised designs for the building in 2009, following a series of budget cuts that forced them to reconsider their original concept.

See more stories about Herzog & de Meuron, including interviews we filmed with both Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron at the opening of their Serpentine Gallery Pavilion this summer.

Photography is by Clo’e Floirat, apart from where otherwise stated.

Here’s a design statement from Herzog & de Meuron:

The starting point for the new Parrish Art Museum is the artist’s studio in the East End of Long Island. We set the basic parameters for a single gallery space by distilling the studio’s proportions and adopting its simple house section with north-facing skylights. Two of these model galleries form wings around a central circulation spine that is then bracketed by two porches to form the basis of a straightforward building extrusion.

The floor plan of this extrusion is a direct translation of the ideal functional layout. A cluster of ten galleries defines the heart of the museum. The size and proportion of these galleries can be easily adapted by re-arranging partition walls within the given structural grid. To the east of the gallery core are located the back of house functions of administration, storage, workshops and loading dock. To the west of the galleries are housed the public program areas of the lobby, shop, and café with a flexible multi-purpose and educational space at the far western end.

An ordered sequence of post, beam and truss defines the unifying backbone of the building. Its materialisation is a direct expression of readily accessible building materials and local construction methods.

The exterior walls of in situ concrete act as long bookends to the overall building form, while the grand scale of these elemental walls is tempered with a continuous bench formed at its base for sitting and viewing the surrounding landscape. Large overhangs running the full length of the building provide shelter for outdoor porches and terraces.

The placement of the building is a direct result of the skylights facing towards the north. This east-west orientation, and its incidental diagonal relationship within the site, generates dramatically changing perspective views of the building and further emphasises the building’s extreme yet simple proportions. It lays in an extensive meadow of indigenous grasses that refers to the natural landscape of Long Island.

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Herzog & de Meuron appeared first on Dezeen.

To coincide with the final weeks of the Serpentine Gallery Pavilion, here’s an interview we filmed at the opening in May with Pierre de Meuron of architects Herzog & de Meuron, in which he talks to Dezeen about how the pavilion was realised in cork to appeal to all the senses and “not only your eyes”.

The architects teamed up with artist Ai Weiwei on the project and De Meuron explains how they worked around the problem that Weiwei isn’t permitted to leave China before admitting that the protective acoustics of the space were a stroke of luck, since they weren’t able to test them beforehand.

On the same day, Jacques Herzog also gave us an exclusive, impromptu tour of the pavilion, which you can watch below or view at a larger size here.

The Serpentine Gallery Pavilion closes next weekend with a series of talks and discussions by the architects and a host of other speakers, and Dezeen readers are in with a chance of winning tickets to attend. Find out more here »

See photos of the pavilion and read more about it in our earlier story »

See the initial designs for the pavilion » 
See all our stories about the annual Serpentine Gallery Pavilions »
See all our stories about Herzog & de Meuron »
See all our stories about Ai Weiwei »

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to all your senses” – Pierre de Meuron appeared first on Dezeen.

Architects Herzog & de Meuron have uncovered three underground concrete tanks at the Tate Modern gallery in London to create new spaces for art and performance, which open this week (+ slideshow).

The huge industrial cylinders previously held oil that fuelled the turbines of the former power station, but have lain empty since the building was decommissioned in 1981 and later converted into a gallery.

The eastern tank reopens with an exhibition of light and movie projection by Korean artist Sung Hwan Kim, while the southern tank is hosting an ongoing programme of performance art and the western tank has been subdivided into dressing rooms and other ancillary spaces.

Glass doors lead visitors through from the turbine hall into the cylinders, where the raw concrete structure is left exposed.

The Tanks are the first phase in the construction of a new wing at the gallery, scheduled to complete in 2016 – see images in our earlier story.

Herzog & de Meuron also collaborated with Ai Weiwei on the design of the Serpentine Gallery, which is currently open in London’s Kensington Gardens. See images here or watch the tour we filmed with Jacques Herzog here.

See all our stories about Herzog & de Meuron »

Photography is by Tate Photography.

Here’s some more information about The Tanks:

New Tate Modern Tanks Open to the Public

A new commission by Korean artist Sung Hwan Kim was unveiled today in The Tanks at Tate Modern. This major new work is the first installation to be created especially in The Tanks, the world’s first museum galleries permanently dedicated to exhibiting live art, performance, installation and film works. In Kim’s work, visitors are plunged into a fantastical world of optical illusions that draws on a rich history of performance and film. The commission for the Maja Hoffmann/Luma Foundation Tank is supported by Sotheby’s and runs from 18 July to 28 October. The launch is part of the London 2012 Festival, the culmination of the Cultural Olympiad.

The Tanks are the first phase of the Tate Modern Project, which is being made possible by a number of significant donations from public funders and foundations including a £50m investment from the Government, £7m from the Greater London Authority, an important donation from the Blavatnik Family Foundation and generous gifts from The Deborah Loeb Brice Foundation and The Dr Mortimer and Theresa Sackler Foundation.

On the occasion of the opening of The Tanks, Tate has announced a group of major individual donations. These include gifts to support The Tanks, new galleries, learning spaces and other areas of the new building. The donors include a number of Tate’s current and former Trustees among them Lord Browne, Mala Gaonkar, Maja Hoffmann, Elisabeth Murdoch, Franck Petitgas and John Studzinski as well as other individual donors including Christina and John Chandris, James Chanos, Ago Demirdjian and Tiqui Atencio Demirdjian, George Economou, Lydia and Manfred Gorvy, Noam Gottesman, Catherine Lagrange, Pierre Lagrange, Allison and Howard W. Lutnick, Barrie and Emmanuel Roman and others who wish to remain anonymous.

The generosity of early donors to this phase, Maja Hoffmann and John Studzinski, is recognised through The Maja Hoffmann/Luma Foundation Tank and The Studzinski Galleries.

Tate Members have also supported the project and altogether over three quarters of the total capital costs of £215 million has been raised.

Art in Action, a fifteen-week festival celebrating performance, film and installation and the historical works that have shaped these art forms, will run in The Tanks until 28 October. The festival allows audiences to explore new developments in art practice and learning, see bold new work being developed by artists, and engage more deeply with the programme. The Tanks are raw, industrial spaces which provide an anchor and home for the live art and film programmes which have previously been presented in diverse spaces around Tate Modern.

A rolling series of projects will take place in the southern Tank addressing the history of performance, film and interdisciplinary work alongside new work. The renowned choreographer Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker has worked with visual artist Ann Veronica Janssens to adapt Fase: Four Movements to the Music of Steve Reich 1982 to be the first performance staged in The Tanks. Two recent acquisitions to Tate’s collection also go on display for the first time: Suzanne Lacy’s The Crystal Quilt 1985-87 and Lis Rhodes’ Light Music 1975. From the 16th to the 27th August The Tanks will also host Undercurrent, a programme specially created by and for young people involving sound, performance, film and the digital. In addition to three major symposia, Art in Action will include interventions and participatory events for visitors of all ages. The opening programme is supported by The Tanks Supporters Group.

Over 40 established and emerging artists from around the world are taking part in Art in Action, including Ei Arakawa (Japan), Jelili Atiku (Nigeria), Nina Beier (Denmark), Tania Bruguera (Cuba), Boris Charmatz (France), Keren Cytter (Israel), Tina Keane (UK), Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker (Belgium), Liu Ding (China), Jeff Keen (UK), Anthea Hamilton (UK), Sung Hwan Kim (Korea), Rabih Mroué (Lebanon), Eddie Peake (UK), Yvonne Rainer (US), Lis Rhodes (UK), Aura Satz (UK), Patrick Staff (UK), Aldo Tambellini (US), Kerry Tribe (US) and Haegue Yang (Korea).

The new development, by internationally celebrated architects Herzog & de Meuron, will create a spectacular new building adjoining Tate Modern to the south. This will be Britain’s most important new building for culture since the creation of the British Library in 1998. The new building will increase Tate Modern’s size by 60%, provide more space for contemporary art and enable Tate to explore new areas of visual culture involving photography, film, video and performance, enriching its current programme for a broader audience.

The first phase of the new development begins with the opening of Tate Modern’s spectacular Tanks dedicated to exhibiting live art, performance, installation and film works. These massive industrial chambers have lain unused since Bankside Power Station was decommissioned in 1981. They have now being transformed into some of the most exciting new spaces for art in the world.

The opening programme for The Tanks is curated by Catherine Wood, Curator of Contemporary Art and Performance, Kathy Noble, Curator of Interdisciplinary Projects and Stuart Comer, Curator of Film in collaboration with Learning colleagues including Marko Daniel, Convenor (Adult Programmes) and Mark Miller, Convenor (Young People’s Programmes).

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by Herzog & de Meuron appeared first on Dezeen.

Dezeen Wire: Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron and Chinese artist Ai Weiwei will collaborate on the design of this year’s Serpentine Gallery Pavilion in Kensington Gardens, London, which will tunnel underground.

They plan to install a series of columns below the surface of the lawn to represent each past pavilion as well as the present one, supporting a floating roof just 1.5 metres above the ground.

In accordance with the selection rules the temporary pavilion will be the pair’s first joint commission in the UK, although it won’t be the first building by Herzog & de Meuron in London.

Herzog & de Meuron and Ai Weiwei famously teamed up to co-design the Beijing National Stadium for the 2008 Olympic games.

The twelfth annual pavilion follows previous structures by architects including Peter Zumthor, Jean Nouvel, SANAA and Frank Gehry. You can see images of them all here, watch our interview with Peter Zumthor at the opening of last year’s pavilion on Dezeen Screen and read even more about the pavilions in our Dezeen Book of Ideas.

See also: more stories about Herzog & de Meuron and more stories about Ai Weiwei.

Here’s the full press release from the Serpentine Gallery:

Revealed: Herzog & de Meuron and Ai Weiwei to design Serpentine Gallery Pavilion 2012

The Serpentine Gallery is proud to announce that Herzog & de Meuron and Ai Weiwei will create the 2012 Serpentine Gallery Pavilion. It will be the twelfth commission in the Gallery’s annual series, the world’s first and most ambitious architectural programme of its kind.

The design team responsible for the celebrated Beijing National Stadium, which was built for the 2008 Olympic Games and won the prestigeous RIBA Lubetkin Prize, will come together again in London in 2012 in a special development of the Serpentine’s acclaimed annual commission which will be presented as part of the London 2012 Festival, the culmination of the Cultural Olympiad. The Pavilion will be Herzog & de Meuron and Ai Weiwei’s first collaborative built structure in the UK.

This year’s Pavilion will take visitors beneath the Serpentine’s lawn to explore the hidden history of its previous Pavilions. Eleven columns characterising each past Pavilion and a twelfth column will support a floating platform roof 1.5 metres above ground. Taking an archaeological approach, the architects have created a design that will inspire visitors to look beneath the surface of the park as well as back in time across the ghosts of the earlier structures.

Julia Peyton-Jones, Director, and Hans Ulrich Obrist, Co-Director, Serpentine Gallery, said: “It is a great honour to be working with Herzog & de Meuron and Ai Weiwei. We are delighted that our annual commission will bring this unique architectural collaboration to Europe to mark the continuity between the Beijing 2008 and the London 2012 Games.”

Describing their design concept Herzog & de Meuron and Ai Weiwei said: “Every year since 2000, a different architect has been responsible for creating the Serpentine Gallery’s summer Pavilion for Kensington Gardens. That makes eleven Pavilions so far, our contribution will be the twelfth. So many Pavilions in so many different shapes and out of so many different materials have been conceived and built that we tried instinctively to sidestep the unavoidable problem of creating an object, a concrete shape.

“Our path to an alternative solution involves digging down some five feet into the soil of the park until we reach the groundwater. There we dig a waterhole, a kind of well, to collect all of the London rain that falls in the area of the Pavilion. In that way we incorporate an otherwise invisible aspect of reality in the park – the water under the ground – into our Pavilion. As we dig down into the earth we encounter a diversity of constructed realities such as telephone cables and former foundations.

Like a team of archaeologists, we identify these physical fragments as remains of the eleven Pavilions built between 2000 and 2011. Their shape varies: circular, long and narrow, dots and also large, constructed hollows that have been filled in. These remains testify to the existence of the former Pavilions and their greater or lesser intervention in the natural environment of the park.

“All of these foundations will now be uncovered and reconstructed. The old foundations form a jumble of convoluted lines, like a sewing pattern. A distinctive landscape emerges out of the reconstructed foundations which is unlike anything we could have invented; its form and shape is actually a serendipitous gift. The three-dimensional reality of this landscape is astonishing and it is also the perfect place to sit, stand, lie down or just look and be amazed. In other words, the ideal environment for continuing to do what visitors have been doing in the Serpentine Gallery Pavilions over the past eleven years – and a discovery for the many new visitors anticipated for the London 2012 Olympic Games.”

On the foundations of each single Pavilion, we extrude a new structure (supports, walls) as load-bearing elements for the roof of our Pavilion – eleven supports all told, plus our own column that we can place at will, like a wild card. The roof resembles that of an archaeological site. It floats some five feet above the grass of the park, so that everyone visiting can see the water on it, its surface reflecting the infinitely varied, atmospheric skies of London. For special events, the water can be drained off the roof as from a bathtub, from whence it flows back into the waterhole, the deepest point in the Pavilion landscape. The dry roof can then be used as a dance floor or simply as a platform suspended above the park.

The Serpentine Gallery Pavilion will operate as a public space and as a venue for Park Nights, the Gallery’s high-profile programme of public talks and events.

Connecting to the archaeological focus of the Pavilion design Park Nights will culminate in October with the Serpentine Gallery Memory Marathon, the latest edition of the annual Serpentine Marathon series conceived by Hans Ulrich Obrist, now in its seventh year. The Marathon series began in 2006 with the 24-hour Serpentine Gallery Interview Marathon; followed by the Experiment Marathon in 2007; The Manifesto Marathon in 2008; the Poetry Marathon in 2009, the Map Marathon in 2010 and the Garden Marathon in 2011.