TATE MODERN
Once a power station. Now a museum. And in between a quiet revolution in brick.
The Switch House rises beside the Turbine Hall like a shard of compressed earth. Its form is strong, almost primal a twisted, pyramidal tower cut from concrete and wrapped in brick. Not ordinary brick, but a skin of 336,000 individually set units. Each one laid to breathe.
Application: Art Gallery
Architect: Herzog & de Meuron
Product: Custom Brick
Location: London, United Kingdom
Photographs: Iwan Baan
Inside, the building opens. Galleries scale up and down from quiet, intimate volumes to large, top-lit halls. But it’s the brick that sets the tone. It holds the building. Grounds it. And lifts it.
Inspiration from traditional brick structures
160 different types of bricks were designed for the Switch House, each with its own shape, size, and colour.
It is clad in a perforated lattice of 336,000 bricks
The combination of bricks and glass balancing the building's modern style with its heritage.
The Switch House doesn’t borrow from history. It builds on it brick by brick, breath by breath.
The façade is a lattice. Perforated. Precise. By day, it lets light drift through. By night, it glows from within a porous veil that softens the mass and lets the building exhale. It’s not decorative. It’s functional. A breathing skin that hides the structure and reveals the light.
This is brick reimagined. It nods to the language of the old power station, but speaks in a different tone, sharper, looser, more open. It folds and cuts. It filters and frames. It turns a dense, heavy material into something light and almost floating.