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Tate Modern IIBankside, London, UK ¤ London's Tate Modern gallery occupies a former oil-fired power station on the south bank of the River Thames, opposite St Paul's Cathedral. The huge brick building was constructed 1947-63 and is a Grade II listed structure. Immediately to the south are the switch house and three very large underground oil tanks, 8m deep and constructed in concrete.
The gallery opened in 2000 expecting 1.8 million visitors a year. Instead, it now receives an average of 4.5 million visitors, making its planned extension more than welcome. As part of a wider project known as The Tate Modern Project, we are working with architect Herzog & de Meuron on an extraordinary new building, currently known as Tate Modern II. The project includes the redevelopment of part of the switch house and close integration, visually and physically, with the main building.
The new building will increase Tate Modern's display space by 60% over 11 levels, and provide additional performance and education spaces, retail areas, cafes and offices. Its form is complex, with an irregular ground plan largely dictated by the constraints of the site, including the buried tanks, which are being converted. The west tank is the basement level (level 1) of the new structure and the other two tanks are being refurbished as "as found" gallery space. All are accessible from the main building's Turbine Hall entrance.
Above ground, Tate Modern II rises in a truncated twisting pyramid, with sharp corners and inward creases, breaking the facades into interesting geometries — in response to the rectilinear monumentality of the power station. Tying the buildings together visually are the external materials but here the brickwork forms a sloping perforated screen encasing the building, punctuated by a series of windows. The two buildings connect at levels 1 and 2, and at 5 via a new bridge to the switch house. At the double-height top floor, glazed curtain-walling is set back from the facade to form a terrace, with the structure continuing above.
Steel and in situ concrete framing are used. The raking steel frame of the tower is encased in concrete, providing the monolithic feel and finish requested by the architect as well as fire protection. Precast waterproof concrete panels supporting the brick outer cladding, and including window inserts, constitute the independent loadbearing facades. The design resolves the challenges of working with 5 differently-raked planes as well as vertical ones. The largely re-built switch house is steel frame.
Ramboll is providing environmental consultancy and structural, geotechnical, facade, bridge, infrastructure, soil/groundwater and transport engineering for project. Tate Modern II is due for completion in 2013, with phase one opening to the public in 2012. |
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