London Tate Modern Expansion

[wyliepoon]

Yahoo! News

Link to article

London's Tate Modern gallery to expand

2 hours, 9 minutes ago

LONDON - Tate Modern, Britain's most popular art gallery, on Tuesday announced plans to build a $400 million extension to its riverside London home.

The gallery said the ziggurat-shaped glass building, due to be completed in time for the 2012 London Olympics, would almost double the facility's exhibition space.

The expansion will be financed through a combination of public and private funding, including $13 million from the London Development Agency.

It will be built by Swiss architects Herzog and de Meuron, who created the gallery from the disused Bankside power station.

Designed to accommodate 1.8 million visitors a year, the gallery now gets more than 4 million, Tate director Nicholas Serota said.

The 230-foot structure ¡X which requires planning approval ¡X will include 10 new galleries and two performance spaces. It will be built on the site of an electricity substation on the south side of the gallery.

"Over the past few years, the expectations of visitors to museums everywhere have transformed," Serota said. "They expect a different kind of experience. I think the new building will provide the means for that."

He said the gallery was confident of raising the money to complete the project on time.

"We have a number of people who have already expressed a very serious interest in putting money into this project," he said.

"It is something I think London deserves and I believe people will respond positively to the project."

 

[billy corgan19982]

Meh, looks like a bunch of Jenga blocks.

 

[jayomatic]

Landmark?

I love it. I would love to get a Herzog and De Meuron here. Can't wait to see what the cladding will be like.

 

[cdl42]

Brilliant! I love the Tate Modern... can't wait for an expansion.

 

[thenay]

Doesn't look like anything new design wise, but regardless i'm glad to see Tate expanding

 

[samsonyuen]

Exciting! I don't know if I like it though. Is it behind the building (south) or is it to the west of the building?

 

[garden of evil]

The article says it is to the south, which means behind the Tate. The image above shows the Tate from it's west side (main entrance).

 

[tudararms]

Yet another sign of London reinventing itself as a modern, diverse and relevent city. I guess not even London can rest on its laurels or past glories.

The Tate Modern is enormously popular with Londoners, but I'm curious how popular it is with the tourist set. Along with traditional favourites such as St. Paul's and the Tower, the typical tour itinerary now also includes the Eye. I wonder if the Tate Modern is on the list too? This city certainly seems to know how to build tourist sites. The city also seems to think the Olympics are important. Hmmm, anything we can learn from London here in Toronto?

 

[allabootmatt]

I work near the Tate Modern. Believe me, it's on the tourist route, judging by the throngs of people with cameras outside at all hours of the day. Also, like most London museums it's free, which doesn't hurt at all.

One thing I'm curious about is what, exactly, is going to go into this huge new space. The Tate is undoubtedly spectacular, and the installations in the Turbine Hall are great...but much of the art is somewhat un-inspiring, certainly compared to what's available at MoMA, for example.

Bankside (and the South Bank in general) is a funny area. Along the river are these glittering archi-palaces almost all the way down...and go inland ten minutes' walk and it looks like A Clockwork Orange.

 

[tudararms]

London is truly a feast for the eyes and senses. It views itself as centre of the civilized world, so does Paris for that matter, and it is this supreme confidence that inspires and informs the city at all levels, private and public. Compare this attitude to the parsimonious and parochial attitude we traditionally find in Toronto where there is little sense of importance or destiny. Hopefully this is changing as Toronto comes into its own. I think how we handle the Waterfront will be a big indication of what Toronto will be, smug backwater or international star.

 

[AlvinofDiaspar]

tudararms:

Be careful what you wish for, however. That centre of the world, self-important attitude often translates into high cost of living and lower quality of life for the majority of the citizenry, and for all our supposed parochialism, we've made the list of top tier world-cities.

AoD

 

[tudararms]

Low quality of life in London and Paris? Of course poverty exists and there are ghetto-like suburbs, despite healthy and prolific social wellfare policies, but we have those problems in Toronto too, do we not?

Your admonition is noted though Aod. I'm not necessarily advocating the policies of those cities. Rather, I'm looking at the pervasive positive relationship that exists there between the city and its people at all levels, and how the city benefits from it.

 

[allabootmatt]

It helps when, a) you're the capital of the country that basically invented the "civilized world," and, b) that capital happens to be 4-5x larger than the country's next biggest city, and about 100x more important. That leaves a lot of room for pride...Canada's problem is that it's just too big, too diffuse, to focus resources on one urban showpiece like the UK can with London.

 

[samsonyuen]

I agree, it's a big tourist draw. Allabootmatt, where do you lve in London? I live in the Docklands and work in Fulham.

 

[allabootmatt]

Clerkenwell for now.