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Herzog & de Meuron Basel Ltd., or Herzog & de Meuron Architekten, BSA/SIA/ETH, is a Swiss architecture firm with its head office in Basel, Switzerland. The careers of founders and senior partners Jacques Herzog, and Pierre de Meuron, closely paralleled one another, with both attending the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zürich. They are perhaps best known for their conversion of the giant Bankside Power Station in London to the new home of Tate Modern. Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron have been visiting professors at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design since 1994 and professors at ETH Zürich since 1999.
The firm was founded in Basel in 1978. In 2001, Herzog & de Meuron were awarded the Pritzker Prize, the highest of honours in architecture. Jury chairman J. Carter Brown commented, "One is hard put to think of any architects in history that have addressed the integument of architecture with greater imagination and virtuosity." This was in reference to HdM's innovative use of exterior materials and treatments, such as silkscreened glass. Architecture critic and Pritzker juror Ada Louise Huxtable summarized HdM's approach concisely: "They refine the traditions of modernism to elemental simplicity, while transforming materials and surfaces through the exploration of new treatments and techniques." In 2006, the New York Times Magazine called them "one of the most admired architecture firms in the world."
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