Art Spaces – Herzog & de Meuron

Our personal affinity to art inspired a natural interest, since the beginning of the practice, for cultural projects. Over the past four decades, Herzog & de Meuron have designed over 120 spaces for the visual arts: museums, art depots, artist studios, exhibition and performance venues, fabrication and education facilities, and art centers. These projects are custom made to fulfill the needs of art, the artists and the curators, and of course the public. They follow no set style, each individually questioning and shaping the production, presentation and perception of art in distinct ways.

The completion of three museums in the last quarter of 2021 are our latest milestones of this typology: M+ in Hong Kong, Museum Küppersmühle in Duisburg, and SONGEUN Art Space in Seoul have unique approaches to their respective sites, spatial requirements and materiality, but they share a collective focus to stimulate exchange between people.

We consider these art spaces as public places, where people gather beyond their interest in art. The Turbine Hall of the Tate Modern in London, the Plaza at Caixa Forum in Madrid, the outdoor squares of Tai Kwun Center for Heritage and Arts and the roof terrace of the Museum M+ in Hongkong – although very different in nature, all have become places for communal experience, and many of our art spaces have fostered new life in the neighborhoods they are part of.