Tate, take 2.

April 25, 2015

A couple of weeks ago I went back to Tate Modern on London's Southbank. Id been to a talk at Ecobuild the previous year by Max Fordham environmental engineers on the design and sustainability strategies for the new Tate 2 extension designed by the much celebrated and cerebral Swiss architects Herzog and DeMeuron and was excited to see it well underway on site. 

Its twisting, complex, sculptural form had always seemed slightly at odds with the existing building to me from the design drawings and renders. However, seeing it in the flesh as it were, albeit a determinedly solid frame of perfectly formed concrete I was remarkably impressed with how well it added to, and not detracted from its former industrial host. Like a deformed conjoined twin, it attaches itself to the south west corner of the existing building and contorts into the sky in a complex form which must haven given the design team endless grief, not to think of the skilled men trying to piece the jigsaw together.

What I loved about it was that really tangible sense of the human endeavour and energy that had already been poured in abundance into the project. It oozed effort from every pour of concrete, and every pore of its sophisticated fabric. Mechanical extract cowls puncturing the concrete in perfect alignment, and beautifully coordinated across the warped facade. The concrete frame was being clothed in a coat of 'bricks', but not like any Id ever seen before. Each appeared to be a bespoke hand crafted earthen piece which will stack up the exterior of the building in a mesh of continuously changing porosity and texture.   

Cant wait to go back and see it finished!