New Development of Tate Modern; public terrace on top floor © Herzog & de Meuron
New Development of Tate Modern; public terrace on top floor © Herzog & de Meuron
TATE MODERN
The new building will be visible from the north. As one approaches Tate Modern from the River, it will be seen rising behind the power station without competing with the iconic chimney. In the way that integrating the new building into the existing has been fundamental to the project, so too was integrating the building into the skyline of the city and ensuring that visitors both inside and out could orientate themselves.
With a new entrance to the south and a direct north-south passage, taking people from the Thames through the existing building and out onto a new triangular city plaza to the south on Sumner Street and from there on to Southwark, a path will be carved through the jungle of buildings to connect Southwark with the Thames and to provide more open, public space, with Tate Modern at its heart.
Like the adjoining Turbine Hall, the oil tanks provide a found industrial space of extraordinary scale and dramatic beauty complementing the more refined spaces rising above. They provide not only the physical foundation for the new building, but also the starting point for intellectual and curatorial approaches, which have changed and developed to meet the needs of a contemporary museum in the twenty-first century. This applies especially to the diversity of exhibition spaces and facilities open to the public both inside and outside the complex. This dialogue – between the raw and the refined, the found and the new, interior and exterior – lies at the heart of the architectural vision for the project.
You can view a 360° panorama of the oil tanks interactive here
A bridge will be added at Level 2 and a sweeping ceremonial route will cut through the entire new building, culminating in stunning views over London.
The approach the architects adopted in the original scheme involved digging out the Turbine Hall space in order to turn the vast physical dimensions of the existing structure into a practical reality. The treatment of the oil tank spaces in TM2 parallels this approach – both defining the footprint of the new extension, and providing the first in several series of radical spaces.
In developing these plans the Turbine Hall and the bridge have acquired ever more weight as a means of integrating the buildings, with the Turbine Hall as the heart of the transformed Tate Modern. The combined elements of Tate Modern, old and new, express a whole and will function as a single organism.
Nevertheless, TM2 will form a complete contrast to the original development of Tate Modern in several respects: Tate Modern is essentially oriented horizontally; TM2 gallery spaces are stacked vertically. Tate Modern is a huge oblong box; TM2 is a pyramid-like structure. Windows are vertically aligned in one structure; dramatic horizontal openings in the other. In the original scheme the shape was already defined by the existing structure; here it has developed from spatial and programmatic needs rather than any stylistic intent or statement.
The new building complements Giles Gilbert Scott’s Bankside structure – rising vertically with horizontal terraces – using the same base palette of awe-inspiring brickwork at scale combined with dramatic windows, here appearing as transparent horizontal cuts; so each elevation alternates between solid, perforated and entirely clear.
