Turbine Hall: 3 o the Unilever Series - Essay Example

In December 1992, the Board of trustees and Tate authority made a decision to come up with a museum for Tate’s increasing collection of international modern. The trustees had to decide where to locate the new gallery and whether it should be a conversion of the existing construction or a new building. The Tate’s director brought the idea of housing the new museum located at the Bankside power station. After a visit to the building of all the trustees in July 1993, Tate officially announced taking up of the Bankside Power Station as the selected site in April 1994.

An international completion was conducted to select the architect for the conversion. One hundred and forty eight entries were made but only thirteen were first shortlisted followed by final six projects. The trustees were looking for architect not projects. The architect to be selected had to meet the requirements of being flexible in practice and fulfill Tate’s expectations while functioning on the renovation of the building. In January Tate made a decision to choose Herzog and de Meuron as the architects of the redesign (Doorly, 94).

De Meuron and Herzog accepted every characteristic of the existing building and decided to make good use of its features. De Meuron and Herzog proposed for the extremely large space which was five hundred foot long, seventy foot wide and one hundred and fifteen foot high. The Swiss team left it untouchable hence it was a large space which could serve well as an exhibition space. Tate modern was officially opened in 2000 and in this same year attracted double the expected number of visitors- five point two millions.

Tate modern was visited by 5.3 million people during the Uniliver exhibition. It became the most popular modern art museum globally. Tate modern holds this title today with roughly five point three million visitors in 2013. The development