Tate Modern Building - Essay Example

However, Herzog and De Meuron a small Swiss firm won the honor of building the Tate Modern. The main reason they won was that their proposal wanted to retain much of the essential character of the building. The power station consisted of a huge turbine hall, thirty-five metres high and 152 metres long, parallel to it is the boiler house. The turbine hall has become a dramatic entrance area with ramped access, plus exhibit for large sculptural projects. The boiler house became the galleries, and are on three levels running the full length of the building.

The galleries are in separate but linked blocks called suites, and on either side of the escalators. The Tate collection of modern art is displayed on two of the gallery floors, the third is devoted to temporary exhibitions. To the original roofline of the power station Herzog and De Meuron added a two-storey galls penthouse called a light beam. The top level of this houses a caf-restaurant with stunning views of the river and the City. The lower levels are members room with terraces on both sides of the building.

The chimney is capped by a colored light, known as the swiss light, feature designed by the artist Michael Craig-Martin. The penthouse light beam and the Swiss Light mark the presence of Tate Modern for many miles. There are two basic views of the public environment: that the city s. hat district we are talking about is as follows: To place building relative to the street, have the doors relative to the sidewalk- are they convenient and frequent enough to support the type of activity desired on the street- and the architectural scale should have two components: the building should have a level of detail, variety and material quality that makes human interaction pleasant, and the building should compliment the character of neighboring structures.

There is a very little difference that unites post-modernism but the rejection of strict modernism. Post-modernism represents a break-down in the modernist consensus and an opening of the door to different approaches to design. The hope of post-modernism lies in the sense of new possibilities combined with a willingness to learn from past architectural achievements. The problem is that it might become a self-enclosed culture of competing in- groups arguing about the use of smart historical references that no one else can understand or even see.

An eye to publicity and self- promotion would not replace fundamental rethinking of the relations between architecture and society that includes the community and the users of the buildings as a vital part of the process of design. ( Modern Architecture,4) Basic Facts The total cost of construction was 134 million pounds. The construction manager: Schal, a division of Carillion plc. The architects were Herzog & De Meuron, Jacques Herzog, Pierre de Meuron, Harry Gugger and Christine Binswanger.

The project and construction date was from 1995 to 2000. The site area: 3.43 Ha. The total floor area: 34, 500 square meters. The Tate Modern has a special exhibition suite of 1,300 m, an auditorium that seats 240 people, 2 cafes, 3 shops of 500, 300, and 150 square meters,