Tate Modern - Reinventing A Power Plant (essay)

TATE MODERN LONDON Reinventing a Power Plant

JOAQUIM PAZ – 2006

Tate Modern is Britain’s national museum of modern art in London The building which since 2000 it has been the Tate Modern gallery is located on the south bank of the Thames in the Bankside district of London is a remarkable, powerful and dramatic combination of old and the new architecture providing 10,000m2 of gallery space. It is housed in the former Bankside Power Station which was originally designed by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott. Sir Giles Gilbert Scott (November,9 ,1880—February 8, 1960) was an english architect also known for his work on such buildings as Liverpool Cathedral, a matching library for the University of Cambridge and the famous British red telephone box. He came from a family of famous architects, being the son of George Gilbert Scott (junior), grandson of Sir George Gilber Scott, nephew of John Oldrid Scott, and brother of Adrian Gilber Scott. He is also the father of architect Richard Gilbert Scott. Scott was noted for his blending of Gothic tradition with modernism, making what might have been functionally designed buildings into popular landmarks. The London Power Company had commissioned a new electricity generating station at Battersea and in 1930 commissioned Scott as a consultant to make the inevitably massive architecture more appealing. Scott chose external bricks and put some detailing on the sheer walls, then remodelled the four corner chimneys so that they resembled classical columns. Battersea Pwer Station, completed in 1933 but disused since 1982, remains one of the most conspicuous industrial buildings in London. The building is brick-clad steel structure, 200 m long, constructed from more than 4.2 million bricks, with a substantial central chimney of 99 m. The height of the central chimney was limited to this height in order to be lower than the dome of St Paul's Cathedral on the opposite side of the river. The station was commissioned following a power shortage in 1947 and Scott's design was completed and accepted within a year, despite strong local opposition. Construction work was in two phases and was not completed until 1963. The western portion of the building was completed first and started generating power in 1952. The final structure roughly divided the building into three - the huge main turbine hall in the centre, with the smaller boiler room to one side and the switching room to the other. The oil-fired station had four generators. Rising oil prices made the station uneconomic, resulting in its closure in 1981. For many years Bankside Power station was at great risk of being demolished by developers. Many people campaigned for the building to be saved and put forward suggestions for possible new uses. An application to list the building was refused. In the spring of 1993 the building's fate looked doomed, contractors had already knocked a large hole in the side of the building and started removing much of the redundant plant. The BBC television programme 'One foot in the Past' focused on the building's impending threat. The reporter Dan Cruikshank gave an impassioned plea for the building to be saved. In April 1994 the Tate Gallery announced that Bankside would be the home for the new Tate Modern. In July of the same year an international competition was launched to select an architect for the new gallery. In January 1995 Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron of Herzog & de Meuron were announced as the winning architects.

Herzog & de Meuron is a Swiss architect firm with an international reputation, founded in 1978. HdeM's early works were reductivist pieces of modernity that registered on the same level as the minimalist art. However, their recent work at Tokyo, Barcelona and Beijing Olympics Stadium suggest a change of attitude. Though their commitment to the primacy of materiality shows through all their projects, the manipulation of form has gone from boxy “modernism” to volumetric prisms of equal if not greater presence.The architects often cite Joseph Beyus as an enduring artistic inspiration and collaborate with different artists on each architectural project. Their success can be attributed to their skills in revealing unfamiliar or unknown relationships through familiar materials. The £134 million conversion to the Tate Modern started in June 1995 with the removal of the remaining redundant plant. The conversion was completed in January 2000. The most obvious external change is the blocky two-story glass extension on one half of the roof. Much of the internal structure remains, including the cavernous main turbine hall, which retains the overhead travelling crane. A substation is still on site. Scott's other London power station is at Battersea and is widely considered a more iconic design, with its four towers. Battersea Power Station was proposed for the Tate Modern but due to financial constraints and less dilapidation the smaller Bankside building was chosen. As a building, the Tate Gallery on Millbank has not been much admired, 'an unfortunate choice', observed Nikolaus Pevsner of its nineteenth-century architect, Sidney Smith. 'He used the accepted Late Victorian grand manner but neither with discretion nor with originality. In 1957 when Pevsner was writing, the style was not one, in any case, that commanded admiration. His views were echoed by fellow Modernists, but also by much more recent critics. In March 2002, after a long gestation, the gallery was split into two. British art from 1500 to the present day stayed at Millbank in the renamed Tate Britain; international modern and contemporary collections were transferred to Tate Modern on Bankside. Greatly acclaimed, this monument at the south end of the Foster bridge has great public presence (unlike its counterpart facing the Thames with Smith's oddly proportioned and tentative Corinthian portico. But its inert interior with regimented galleries, incomprehensible circulation and some dismal lighting, is dispiriting. Exactly the reverse is true of Tate Britain's interior. Order, grand airy galleries, changing volumes and quantities of natural light together create an infinitely more agreeable experience. This is particularly so since completion of new galleries and a new entrance by John Miller & Partners. The expansion, opening the Tate up to the west, aerates and discreetly modernizes the place -- adding greatly to its pleasure and civilization. Not least, it makes it possible to exhibit works from the reserve collections, hitherto stored away in vaults. Expansion by ad hoc stages has been typical of the Tate's history. Opened in 1897, it was designed by Smith to house the art collection of Sir Henry Tate, a nineteenth-century sugar magnate, and built on the site of the Millbank Penitentiary. Smith was followed in the early part of the twentieth century by W. H. Romaine Walker who designed galleries for the Dutch art dealer, Joseph Duveen, and, later, his son; and subsequently in 1937 by the American classicist, John Russell Pope, responsible with Walker for the Duveen sculpture galleries which mark the central axis running north from Smith's entrance rotunda through a domed octagon. The Tate's status as a national gallery, as well as its neglect of modern continental art at this point, probably explained the choice of architect. (Pope went on to design his great classical essay, the American National Gallery of Art in Washington.)

Up until now, modern architecture has not served the Tate particularly well, represented as it is by Liewellyn Davies, Weeks, Forestier-Walker and Bar's worthy but dull north-east extension, added in 1979, and by James Stirling's self-indulgent wing of 1987, 50 unsympathetic to the Turner paintings. John Miller & Partners' architectural rigour and clarity has been seen most recently in the reorganization and modernization of the Serpentine Gallery in Hyde Park. This practice seems to be entirely without tiresome vanity for here, as there, it has extrapolated from the existing scale and order to create volumes that, where necessary, fit in so unobtrusively as to be scarcely recognizable as interlopers. This is not to say they are not modern spaces; they are careful abstractions of the originals. So seamless are the links between new and old, so discreet and austere the insertions, that it is difficult to appreciate how large the scheme is, increasing the Tate's space by a third. Extending over two levels of the northwest quadrant of the site, it includes refurbishment of five galleries on the upper floor and design of nine new galleries (including the Linbury Galleries for temporary exhibitions on the ground floor), using space previously taken up by a courtyard. Existing galleries have been cleaned up and air conditioned. The coving and skylighting of these volumes, their materials and colours, find echoes in design of the new rooms on the upper floor; only the suppression of skirtings and lack of ornamentation in the latter give the game away. On the lower level, ceilings of the Linbury Galleries are shallow vaults with uplighters shedding reflected light. Expanding horizontally, these are big unadorned volumes with plenty of hanging space and expanses of plain wood floors. The fulcrum of the Miller scheme is the handsome new entrance hall reached from the new Manton entrance on Atterbury Street. Designed to catch visitors coming on foot from Pimlico tube, the entrance relieves crowding at the main doors, caters for disabled visitors, school parties and other group visits, and makes flexible opening hours possible. It is also a hub from which to reach all parts of the museum. The hall is spacious, paved with pale limestone and set with black columns; and is connected to the restaurant and cafe to the south by a ramp and shallow flight of stairs. As elsewhere, detailing is immaculate. To the north are the Linbury Galleries. Standing at the reception desk which stretches across the back (east) wall, you have long views into the light-filled galleries in one direction, through glass doors to the outside (and elegant landscaping by Allies & Morrison) in another, and in another into the glass fronted shop to the left of the entrance. The horizontal expands vertically with procession into a luminous lofty stairwell faced with stone and roofed with etched glass, where a grand flight of stone stairs takes you to the upper floor. Throughout this scheme the links, uncramped and generously proportioned, between the various parts suggest leisurely procession, just as Pope's central aisle does. Stateliness belongs here, and Miller's staircase reflecting the fact is a great delight. The Tate Modern was born of necessity. The old Tate Museum in Millbank, now known as the Tate Britain, simply had too much art. In 1992 the decision was made to divide the collection and open another branch. When the abandoned power station on the banks of the Thames was considered, many scoffed. They said the building was too old, and the massive space housing the power generators was too big for serious art. That's where they were wrong. Now called Turbine Hall, it is able to bring massive works of art to people who would not be able to travel the world to see them. Its five-hundred foot length allows natural light to penetrate a space that would need artificial light if it was divided. The public reaction was spectacular. People lined up for hours to get in. In its first year of operation, more than five million people scrambled through the doors. Since then audience figures have settled to a more sensible level, and the post-September 11th tourist economy has made things hard for the founders. In 2003 the Tate staff managed to reconcile the divided collection by establishing a water shuttle service between the two galleries. Still, millions of people each year flock to the Tate Modern, and it has quickly risen to become one of the top ten attractions in London.

Since its opening on May 12, 2000, , it has become a very popular destination for Londoners and tourists. The gallery is currently, as of 2005, building an extension on its south side that will increase the display space by 60% and which is scheduled to open in 2012. This expansion was also designed by Herzog & de Meuron. Galleries are located on the third, fourth and fifth floors of the building. Thematically-arranged exhibitions from the gallery's permanent collection are located on the third and fifth floors, while temporary exhibitions are located on the fourth floor. The main hall of the building, which originally housed the power station's turbine, is also used for temporary exhibitions. The turbine hall stands seven storeys tall and has 3,400 square metres of floorspace. It is used to display specially-commissioned work by contemporary artists, between October and March each year. This series was originally planned to last the gallery's first five years, but the popularity of the series has led to its extension until 2008. The gallery can be accessed by crossing the London Millenium Bridge which links it with St Paul’s Cathedral, which lies to the north. The closest tube station is Southwark, although Blackfriars tube station and a short walk over Blackfriars Bridge is often more convenient. There is also a riverboat pier just outside the gallery called Bankside Pier, with connections to the Docklands and Greenwich via regular passenger boat services (commuter service) and the Tate to Tate service, which connects Tate Modern with Tate Britain via the London Eye. The Europeans have a talent for finding new uses for old buildings. In this case, the Tate Modern - an art gallery built inside a disused power plant. If this was the United States, the plant would have been leveled in a spectacular implosion, and a shiny new building erected on the spot. But Britons honor their heritage. Even if it is an ugly power station, they realize that sentiments change over the years, and today's discarded hulk of a structure can emerge like a phoenix as tomorrow's ultramodern too-hip-for-you mega tourist attraction The architects who designed the Tate Modern's conversion and won in April, 2001 the Pritzker Prize for their work, and whose plans have highlighed the building's new function while respecting the integrity of Sir Giles Gilbert Scott's original design. The most noticeable change to the exterior of the building is a new two-storey glass structure or lightbeam spanning the length of the roof which not only provides natural light into the galleries on the top floors, but also houses a stunning café offering outstanding views across London. Out of the six finalists Herzog and de Meuron were the only architects to suggest leaving the original power station building largely intact, reusing a significant part of the plan. Their strategy was based on accepting the power and energy of the original building whilst finding new ways to enhance and utilize these qualities - a conceptual rather than design-based approach. All of the original brickwork, windows and chimney have been renovated and retained. The original 500 foot turbine hall, left intact, became a new dramatic entrance for the museum as well as providing a vast exhibition space; visitors enter at one end and descend down a long gradual ramp before being carried upwards on escalators to the auditorium, shop, café and three floors of galleries above. The industrial flavor of the building is reflected in the taupe walls and black steel girders. A new glass ceiling floods the austere space with natural

light, creating an ideal environment for viewing art. Light-filled boxes attached to the sides of this huge space coincide with openings where visitors can look down on the turbine hall from the galleries above. Internally Herzog and de Meuron have emphasized the industrial character of the building through their use of polished concrete, untreated wooden floors and plain light paintwork on the walls contrasting with black girders. Externally their major edition is the Swiss light, a two-story high glass roof beam that runs the whole length of the top of the building. This is the outward signal of the building's change in function providing excellent lighting to the top galleries. It also houses a café that has magnificent views across to St Paul's Cathedral on the other side of the river. At night this horizontal roof beam provides a distinctive addition to the London skyline. The Tate Modern is one of the world's most celebrated examples of adaptive reuse. The enormous art gallery was created from the shell of the old. For the restoration, builders added 3,750 tons of new steel. The industrial-gray Turbine Hall runs nearly the entire length of the building. Its 115 foot high ceiling is illuminated by 524 glass panes. "It's a space you never could ever have achieved with a new building," says Rowan Moore, an architecture critic and author of Building the Tate Modern. "For one thing they'd never get the money for it, but even if they did it would seem like a bombastic gesture because there's all this empty space here." Speaking of the project, Herzog and de Meuron stated, "It is exciting for us to deal with existing structures because the attendant constraints demand a very different kind of creative energy. In the future, this will be an increasingly important issue in European cities. You cannot always start from scratch. We think this is the challenge of the Tate Modern as a hybrid of tradition, Art Deco and super modernism: it is a contemporary building, a building for everybody, a building of the 21st century. And when you don't start from scratch, you need specific architectural strategies that are not primarily motivated by taste or stylistic preferences. Such preferences tend to exclude rather than include something. Our strategy was to accept the physical power of Bankside's massive mountain-like brick building and to even enhance it rather than breaking it or trying to diminish it. This is a kind of Aikido strategy where you use your enemy's energy for your own purposes. Instead of fighting it, you take all the energy and shape it in unexpected and new ways."

BIBLIOGRAPHY

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tate_Modern

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bankside_Power_Station http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giles_Gilbert_Scott http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herzog_%26_de_Meuron

http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/building http://www.glasssteelansstone.com http://www.highbeam.com http://architecture.about.com