The Architects Who Hate Style
There’s something quietly subversive about Herzog & de Meuron, even as their buildings define city skylines from Tokyo to London.
They don’t do logos. They don’t do “signature” forms. They even claim to dislike the idea of a personal style. Yet their work—materially obsessive, contextually precise, and often disorientingly beautiful—is instantly recognizable.
Jacques Herzog (b. 1950) and Pierre de Meuron (b. 1950), childhood friends from Basel, Switzerland, founded their firm in 1978. Over nearly five decades, they’ve become synonymous with high-concept architecture that refuses repetition. From the Tate Modern in London to the Prada Aoyama Epicenter in Tokyo to Beijing’s National Stadium, they’ve built an empire on deliberate inconsistency.
Where most architects chase spectacle, Herzog & de Meuron chase atmosphere.
From Basel to the World
Basel—a small, design-savvy city at the Swiss-French-German border—is their spiritual lab. Both studied architecture at ETH Zürich under Aldo Rossi and Dolf Schnebli, absorbing a mix of rationalist theory and poetic materialism.
Their early commissions were modest: apartment blocks, a signal control center, and small warehouses. Yet even those hinted at their later philosophy—an obsession with texture, material honesty, and light.
They became international names in the 1990s thanks to the Ricola Storage Building in Laufen (1987) and Ricola Factory and Office Building in Mulhouse-Brunstatt (1993), both wrapped in translucent façades printed with images of herbs by artist Karl Blossfeldt. These projects blurred the boundary between art, surface, and structure.
Architecture as Experiment
Each Herzog & de Meuron project begins with material, not form. They build conceptually through touch.
Their Dominus Winery in Napa Valley (completed 1998) embodies this approach. Constructed from basalt stones encased in steel gabions, it filters light and air through its porous skin—architecture as breathable infrastructure.
The Tate Modern (opened 2000) elevated them to global fame. Instead of demolishing London’s disused Bankside Power Station, they transformed it into a cathedral of contemporary art. Their intervention was precise: inserting new volumes while preserving the original brick shell and turbine hall. It became one of the world’s most visited museums and a blueprint for adaptive reuse.
A 2016 expansion, the Blavatnik Building, extended the museum vertically with perforated brick, proving that Herzog & de Meuron could evolve their own ideas without copying themselves.
The Prada Aoyama Epicenter: Tokyo’s Crystal
If one building captures their flair for sensual experimentation, it’s Tokyo’s Prada Aoyama Epicenter (completed 2003).
Located in Omotesando, the store resembles a glass lattice inflated from within. Its diamond-shaped panels—some convex, some concave—distort reflections of Tokyo’s streets like a digital kaleidoscope. Inside, the structure feels fluid and theatrical, its floors undulating around a central void.
Commissioned by Miuccia Prada and Patrizio Bertelli, the project was part of Prada’s early-2000s “Epicenter” initiative, merging fashion, architecture, and technology. It’s still one of the most photographed retail buildings in Asia.
The Bird’s Nest: Chaos in Order
The Beijing National Stadium, completed for the 2008 Olympics, is Herzog & de Meuron’s largest project. Collaborating with Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, they conceived the building as a woven lattice of steel beams—seemingly chaotic but meticulously engineered.
The “Bird’s Nest” became a global icon, though the architects later expressed mixed feelings about its political symbolism. Technically, it remains a masterpiece of structure and spatial drama, housing 91,000 spectators under a single, continuous shell.
Material Intelligence
Herzog & de Meuron’s projects share a trait critics call “material intelligence.” They study how surfaces interact with time, light, and weather.
- The Signal Box in Basel (1995) is wrapped in copper sheeting that oxidizes from gold to green, transforming a utilitarian building into a kinetic sculpture.
- The Parrish Art Museum in Water Mill, New York (2012), reduced from an elaborate masterplan to a single elongated barn, uses simplicity as virtue—open rafters, daylight, and concrete floors evoke the local agrarian landscape.
- In Miami Beach, the 1111 Lincoln Road garage (2010) doubles as a public event space, with sloping decks that host yoga sessions, parties, and film screenings. It’s infrastructure turned civic stage.
Each design begins as a question: What should this building feel like, not just look like?
The Elbphilharmonie: The Sound of Excess
If the Tate Modern is their exercise in restraint, Hamburg’s Elbphilharmonie (2017) is its opposite: maximalist, theatrical, and outrageously expensive. Built atop a former brick warehouse on the Elbe River, its undulating glass façade and wave-shaped roof resemble a frozen ocean.
The project took nearly a decade longer than planned and ballooned from an estimated €77 million to over €866 million. Yet when it finally opened, the acoustics and the views silenced critics. It stands as one of Europe’s most ambitious cultural landmarks—proof that their precision can coexist with spectacle.
The Global Reach
From their Basel headquarters, Herzog & de Meuron now operate offices in London, New York, Hong Kong, and Paris. Their work spans every continent:
- M+ Museum, Hong Kong (2021): a “horizontal skyscraper” housing one of Asia’s largest collections of visual culture.
- National Library of Israel, Jerusalem (opening 2025): an austere limestone volume merging ancient typologies with contemporary geometry.
- Kraftwerk Blöcke, Basel (2024): a cultural and office complex reconnecting their home city to the Rhine River.
Their partnerships with artists—Ai Weiwei, Thomas Ruff, Rémy Zaugg—reveal an interdisciplinary mindset that treats architecture as part of a wider cultural conversation.
The Paradox of Anti-Style
Herzog & de Meuron’s work resists categorization. They can be minimalist in one project and baroque in another, depending on the site. Their only constant is curiosity.
Critics sometimes accuse them of “fetishizing materials” or catering to elitist institutions. Yet their refusal to repeat themselves remains rare in an era when many architects chase branding consistency.
Their buildings rarely explain themselves. They invite interpretation, like art.
The Architects of Ambiguity
Now in their seventies, Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron continue to challenge the logic of form. Both have taught at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design and ETH Zürich, influencing generations of architects.
Herzog once compared buildings to music: “You don’t analyze a song to enjoy it—you feel it.”
That’s their secret. Their architecture doesn’t demand understanding. It asks for attention.
In a world addicted to clarity, Herzog & de Meuron remain committed to mystery.
GLOBAL GRAPHICA 