Luis Fernández-Galiano   The very first work of H&deM was a suit. In Basel’s 1978 carnival, two young architects transformed their brass band march into an artistic action. Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron, both born in this city in the year 1950 and both graduates of Zur

Luis Fernández-Galiano   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 burn

Herzog & de Meuron   Germany   Well-known for its designer furniture factory in the German part of the region, Weil am Rhein is part of the imprecise belt of outer suburban Basel. This photographic studio is located in what was formerly one of the older suburbs of villas in a land

Herzog & de Meuron   Italy   Ten kilometres inland from the Liguria coast, this stone house rises like a watchtower intuitively seeking out the marine horizon. Built on the remains of a demolished construction, the tower overlooks a valley of olive groves and stone terraces that

Herzog & de Meuron   Switzerland   The old quarter of Basel has slowly dispensed with the most picturesque features of its architecture, but its medieval origins are still easily legible in the fragmented property divisions evidenced by the dividing walls. A new construction replaces

Herzog & de Meuron   Switzerland   This garden pavilion is built as an addition to a traditional dwelling that takes up a corner site in a low-density residential area. The new volume, designed to perform as a small theater, has an entrance that can be easily seen from the nearby stre

Herzog & de Meuron   Switzerland   This competition-winning proposal is inserted in the irregular, organic universe of a courtyard hidden behind the terse alignment of the facades that run along Hebelstrasse. This intimate space, which is accessed through a narrow carriageway, feature

Herzog & de Meuron   Switzerland   This house is located in a residential area made up of small plots; its basically rectangular outline rises from the street to a meadow that remains still undeveloped. The more visible volume of the house is a single-story and elongated parallelepipe

Herzog & de Meuron   Switzerland   Laufen, in the Swiss canton of Jura, is best known outside the country for being the headquarters of the famous throat lozenge manufacturer Ricola. A new warehouse was required to automate the storage of lozenges and medicinal herbs. The starting poi

Herzog & de Meuron   Switzerland   Like many railway stations which used to be part of the urban periphery, the Basel station has been engulfed by the city’s growth, giving rise to unresolved encounters between different building structures. As part of the rezoning project aimed at in

Herzog & de Meuron   Switzerland   As part of the rezoning plan for the area of land surrounding Basel station, a new signal box has been built to provide a highly automated system of point switching. The compact tower form is largely determined by its functions and positioning; this

Herzog & de Meuron   Switzerland   When the suva insurance company drafted the brief for the extension to its head office in Basel, it was left to the architects to decide whether to preserve the existing building that partially closes the corner of a closed city block or demolish it

Herzog & de Meuron   France   Set on the Swiss-French border, straddling Basel and the neighboring town of St. Louis, the Pfaffenholz Sports Centre is constructed proof of the good relations between neighbors that do not appear on the precise lines drawn on the maps. Built on Fre

Herzog & de Meuron   Germany   In this residential suburb of Munich, the large plots allotted to the villas merge in a sort of on-going park with consolidated plantations of birch trees, willows and a few evergreens. In the midst of dense foliage alongside a 1960s house, another s

Herzog & de Meuron   France   Set within the second growth ring of the city of Dijon, the campus at the University of Burgundy has been reorganized under a joint collaboration between the studio and Rémy Zaugg. A new thoroughfare known as ‘Twenty First Century Avenue’ structures

Herzog & de Meuron   France   Awooded site between the Rhine-Rhone Canal and the River Ill in Brunnstatt, on the southern outskirts of the French town of Mulhouse, was chosen as the position for the second building commissioned by the Ricola company. Serving as both factory and w

Herzog & de Meuron   Switzerland   In contrast to many other projects, after several months of building, we still did not know how to finish off the house from the outside, what facade to give it. We developed the whole unit from within, from a patio around which we laid out the diffe

Herzog & de Meuron   Germany   Like so many parts of the former East Germany, the urban landscape of Eberswalde still preserves the wounds of the war in its medieval area along with the typical prefab block architecture of the socialist period. The Technical University, founded as

Herzog & de Meuron   United Kingdom   As part of a long term decentralization process, the Tate Gallery commissioned the renovation of its London headquarters in Millbank and its Liverpool site to James Stirling, its branch in St. Ives, Cornwall, to Evans and Shale, and will now move its

Herzog & de Meuron   France   Only a few kilometers from the Swiss-German border, this house is set in a north-eastern French district characterized by a landscape of rolling hills. Over a substratum of clay that gives the town its name, the extensive meadows are dominated by sca

Herzog & de Meuron   Switzerland   The canton Hospital in Basel is an organic collection of buildings with an accumulation of constructive and compositive types that does not reveal a structured idea of the complex. The pharmaceutical centre where medicines are produced and supplied f

Herzog & de Meuron   France   Collaboration with other disciplines is a distinctive feature of the studio, one of the longest-standing, most frequent and intense being with the artist Rémy Zaugg. Beginning in 1990 with the rezoning plan for the Burgundy University in Dijon, the l

Herzog & de Meuron   United States   Near san francisco, the Napa valley retreats up the ridges of the mountain chain that defines the Pacific side of North America, its benign climate being used for the production of great wines known as Napanouk since the beginning of the century. The

Herzog & de Meuron   Switzerland   Soccer stadiums still preserve the symbolic character of those places of cult that once attracted swarms of pilgrims, but today there is an added goal, that of increasing their profitability with additional uses, which often alters the iconic charact

Herzog & de Meuron   Germany   Following the crisis in the German mining industry which left its mark on the Rhur basin – a desolate scene of pollution and unemployment – Duisburg is one of the areas that has benefitted most from the steps taken to revive the landscape and the eco

Herzog & de Meuron   Switzerland   After the automated lozenge warehouse in Laufen and the factory in Mulhouse, the Ricola marketing offices, again in Laufen, are the latest chapter in the collaborations of the studio with this herbal throat lozenge company. In an anonymous context ma

Herzog & de Meuron   United States   Jacques herzog and Pierre de Meuron met Richard and Pamela Kramlich in 1997 through Christian and Cherise Moueix, for whom they were then building the Dominus Winery in Napa Valley. That same year the Kramlichs had created a foundation devoted to med

Herzog & de Meuron   Spain   The buildings of Deusto University have always played a leading role in the shaping of the left bank of the river estuary, testifying in this way to the institution’s commitment to serve the city. For over one hundred years, Deusto has been not only

Herzog & de Meuron   Spain   The celebration of the Universal Forum of Cultures meant for Barcelona the opportunity to redesign and merge into the built fabric a vast extension of industrial terrains and port facilities that were no longer in use in the northern coastal edge of

Herzog & de Meuron   Spain   The remodeling of the Plaza de España is the first phase of the project for the transformation of the coastline separating the historic center from the port of Santa Cruz de Tenerife. The project follows a classical urban scheme consisting in the org

Herzog & de Meuron   Switzerland   Opened in 1849, the Museum der Kulturen Basel replaced the Augustinian monastery on the Münsterhügel with the classicist building by architect Melchior Berri. The “Universal Museum”, as it was then called, was extended in 1917 by the architects Visch

Herzog & de Meuron   Spain   Conceived as a new magnet attracting art-lovers, within the triangle formed by the Prado, Reina Sofía and Thyssen-Bornemisza museums, the new CaixaForum is located on a privileged site of Madrid’s Paseo del Prado, and takes up an old power station –

Herzog & de Meuron   Switzerland   Venue of several important international fairs, the Messe Basel facilities concentrate around the Messeplatz, in the Kleinbasel neighborhood. Aiming to reinforce the density of this square – presided by an office building known as Messe Tower; to rec

Herzog & de Meuron   China   The National Stadium is situated in the north of Beijing, on a gentle rise in the center of the Olympic complex. From the beginning of the project, the purpose was to create an urban site with the capacity to attract and generate public activities an

Herzog & de Meuron   Germany   The center of Munich breathes that unreal immaculate air provided by full employment gives and the absence of mendicity – that has been driven out of the city by force –; the block next to the Theatine Strasse belonging to the Hypobank, is a built sy

Herzog & de Meuron   France   Two distinct urban situations characterize the housing project in 14th arrondissement of Paris; on the one hand, the blocks facing the Rue de Suisses and the Rue Jonquoy and on the other, the courtyard with high fire walls at the back. Two apartment

Herzog & de Meuron   United Kingdom   Deptford is a restructuring area, southeast of London, where the Laban Center has been constructed. St. Paul’s Church becomes an important point of reference for this new complex. The large, embracing gesture of the Laban building volume gives the ef

Herzog & de Meuron   Switzerland   The client’s express wish, from the outset, was not to have the new REHAB center look or feel like a hospital. What is a hospital? Elevators and indoor corridors, flanked by countless doors leading to rooms or examination rooms, a waiting lounge at t

Herzog & de Meuron   Germany   The Brandenburg University of Technology Cottbus (BTU) was newly founded in 1991 following the reunification of Germany. Its buildings are constructed in a uniform style: they are all of essentially the same shape, height and material. In the early n

Herzog & de Meuron   Switzerland   The head office of Helvetia Patria insurance is located on top of the Girtannersberg, a raised part above the town of St. Gallen, and in the vicinity of other large building complexes. The new extensions of the existing cruciform complex are designed

Herzog & de Meuron   Switzerland   What is the point of a Schaulager, of a building in which art is stored but still accessible to the public? What ideas about art and collection strategy does it involve, and what is the best architectural and urban concept for it? The brief: a wareho

Herzog & de Meuron   United States   The M.H. De Young Memorial Museum houses numerous collections, representing a variety of cultures from all over the world. The works of art in these collections go from the present day all the way back to the beginnings of human history. The museum i

Herzog & de Meuron   United States   For the Walker Art Center Expansion, the client did not aim simply to increase the exhibition area, but primarily to give the public more room, more room for urban living inspired by the variety and richness of contemporary art. The Walker Art Center

Herzog & de Meuron   Japan   The initial observation of the site revealed two things: on the one hand, the extreme heterogeneity of the area freed from the need to meet any contextual requirements, and on the other, the site was surrounded by a low-rise type of building. No squa

Herzog & de Meuron   Germany   Three themes define the architectural and urban concept for the world championship football stadium in Munich (the Allianz Arena): the presence of the stadium as an illuminated body that can change its appearance and is situated in an open landscape,