The Daily Telegraph - Features
‘We were naïve about China’
Ahead of a survey of their work at the Royal Academy, Chris Harvey asks Swiss ‘starchitects’ Herzog and de Meuron how a few buildings became so controversial
Pierre de Meuron has a sentimental connection to The Telegraph, he tells me. The less public-facing half of the superstar Swiss architect duo Herzog & de Meuron – who turned a disused Thames-side power station into Tate Modern, then dazzled a global audience with the “Bird’s Nest” stadium for the Beijing Olympics – is calling up his childhood memories. “My grandmother worked as a nurse during the Second World War, and her best friend was Miss Laird – ‘Aunt Nora’, we called her – also a nurse.” After the war, they remained friends, and Aunt Nora, he recalls, who lived in the village of Lenham in Kent, read The Daily Telegraph.
De Meuron tells this story warmly, with affection. I and the two architects are in Herzog & de Meuron’s low-key headquarters in Basel: de Meuron is tanned and relaxed in a blue shirt over an orchid-pink tee; Jacques Herzog, who radiates style and avant-garde intellectual energy, is in a dark blue T-shirt and gold-framed aviators. They were both born in Basel in 1950, built Lego towers together as seven-yearolds, went into partnership in their twenties, and are preparing for a major exhibition of their work at London’s
Royal Academy this summer. They are among the starriest of the “starchitects”.
Yet there’s a human quality to the way they design buildings. In an age when the big names are expected to blow your mind with their creations – from Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim in Bilbao to OMA’s Burj Khalifa in
Dubai – Herzog & de Meuron never forget that one day their buildings will also be used by people. I feel it not only in the family-friendly expanses of Tate Modern at home in London, but also in the restful, light-filled wooden interiors of Rehab, a hospital in Basel for paraplegic patients and people who have suffered brain injuries.
As for the stadium for the 2008 Olympics in China, de Meuron says: “I think we managed not to do something for the [Chinese Communist] Party… The people, of course, are in this one-party system – it’s a dictatorship, no question. But there are also people who live there. And I’m not trying to escape, you know, to wash ourselves [of that connection]. I just want to be realistic.”
That coda is a recognition that architects, artists and musicians have never come under greater scrutiny for the countries in which they choose to build, exhibit and perform. Back in 2008, Herzog expressed a belief that the Bird’s Nest, designed in partnership with the artist Ai Weiwei, would help China embrace ideas of freedom; less than a year later, Ai was under round-the-clock surveillance. I wonder whether, having recently completed the vast edifice of the M+ museum in Hong Kong, where the forces of authoritarianism continue to tighten their grip, Herzog feels that his earlier optimism was fanciful.
“Weiwei,” he says, “is right that we in the West were probably all naïve, believing that working together, trading together, would keep the regime from growing more and more into a repressive society model. And we were convinced that it could be going in a different direction, with more wealth, more public infrastructure, more education, [and that] the pressure to be a liberal government or a liberal society would grow so much that ultimately [that would] happen.”
He pauses. “At the moment, we were wrong, believing that.” At the end of the day, though, he insists, as architects, Herzog & de Meuron will work with China on ongoing major projects while the West still retains diplomatic ties. “As long as there is dialogue, I think that architecture is possible.”
Working in the Middle East, meanwhile, de Meuron notes, involves “really carefully” looking at all elements of a project, but “I think depending what it is, we will do it”. The company will complete the striking new National Library of Israel in Jerusalem later this year. They have, however, given up work in Russia since the invasion of Ukraine. “It was a tough thing,” Herzog says. “We had to terminate contracts, it was a legal issue. It’s also emotional, it’s economical, because we had a gigantic project in Moscow.” (They were completely redeveloping a six-hectare abandoned factory area in the centre of the Russian capital.)
Nor, it seems, will Herzog & de Meuron build a new stadium for Chelsea FC at Stamford Bridge. They had developed plans for the club’s former owner, Roman Abramovich, to create the most spectacular stadium in Britain, with a sculptural framework created from brick ribs supporting a steel ring above the pitch. It was put on hold in 2018 because of an unfavourable investment climate, even before Abramovich was forced to sell up last year, and planning permission would need to be sought again to revive the project.
“It hurts,” Herzog says. “The new owners have not approached us. I’ve heard that they are moving ahead, they want to do something. But I don’t know what they want to do. The project was very advanced, it was the dream. I’m a huge football fan… I admire British football and English stadia, even
ugly ones, because of their intensity.”
They are, however, the chosen architects for the controversial planned redevelopment of Liverpool Street station in London, which involves building two 16-storey towers on top of the station itself, and has attracted the criticism of Historic England. I mention that our new King is an opponent, too, of much of what contemporary architecture has to offer. He prefers neo-classical pastiche to modernism and traditional materials to technological marvels, and he has been grumbling about “carbuncles” since 1989. Herzog is quick to point out that the pair “do not have a preference” for one style of architecture over another: “We do not do towers because we love towers, we do not do neoclassical buildings because we love neo-classical buildings. We think all these topologies of solutions could be adequate or interesting.”
If Herzog can sometimes sound cerebral, there’s no disguising the passion that drives him. When a sudden downpour pierces the baking heat, he stands up and walks over to the large windows, “I want to open the curtains, I think it would be fun to see the rain. I love the noise. This is a storm!” Even so, at 73, both architects recognise that they will eventually step back from the company. They began a process 20 years ago of introducing much younger and more culturally diverse partners, and allowing the latter to acquire it gradually by buying up shares over time. “Another way would have been to just sell it,” Herzog notes, “to give it to some kind of family office or investors and suck out as much money as possible.”
The exhibition at the Royal Academy, opening in mid-July, will include augmented reality (AR) via a phone app, but also some of the amazing library of sketches and models held at the Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron Kabinett in Basel’s imposing Helsinki building. Cardboard and masking tape are a welcome presence. I want to know whether they believe AI will ultimately replace architects: could it ever do what Herzog & de Meuron can do? “I think it’s very interesting,” de Meuron says. “Like analogue and digital, you’re interested in both.” But, he adds, “we will, I think, even in 10 years, or 15 years, when AI is more developed – we will still sit at this table.”
“We do not exclude things, we include things,” Herzog says. “We will see what AI can do. [You have to] face it and try to give an answer – stay open and have a critical relationship.”
‘I admire British football and English stadia, even the ugly ones, because of their intensity’