Herzog & De Meuron reinvented themselves in 1998. During the design of the Ricola offices there was one of those genetic mutations that generate a new organism, because the creative spark of this transformation lit up a formal fire that is still burning, and that delivers a flood of material experiences. The offices, initially drawn up as a large house of Rossian flavor – in continuity with the house in Leyden and with the project for a wood house – transmute into a fractured perimeter of glass that dissolves into the surrounding foliage, subtly protected by an eave of rods that comb under the weight of the vegetation, and lightly enhanced by the chromatic vibration of signature curtaining. From then on, the work of the studio unleashed, as if one clean cut had released all the knots that tied up their propositive energy, and the forms burst with the expansive violence of its critical mass...
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