I pass the Tate Modern gallery and its on-going extension construction on a regular commuter basis. I happened to take these two photos this morning because I’m a geek like that and I was on track to be a healthy 10 minutes early for work.

Glazing installation has been on-going for a few months now but, unlike the enormous, gleaming gems of the city, the glazing on this particular building doesn’t prove to be so exciting.

But as I sat in a popular cafe/restaurant at lunch today, facing the building’s north face, I noticed the brick work had started. ‘It’s been a couple of weeks, now’, my equally geeky colleague informed me. This is time for the brick geeks to get excited. We cladding nerds are shaking with anticipation.

We are about to observe this twisted, concrete hulk transform into the beautifully articulated extensions that the renders have sold us. The image below is one which makes the brickwork and fenestration together seem the more attractive. At night, the brick facade turns into a translucent material. The clever arrangement means that there are areas of clear glass combined with solid brick and glowing patches.





In an interesting talk with Jacques Herzog at the Design Museum London, he suggested something along the lines of (and I am somewhat paraphrasing here, as I don’t tend to carry a Dictaphone) ‘Architect’s need to have an interest, a knowledge of how structure works with the architecture, otherwise they are just…decorators’. I like this point. Without a true understanding of how a building is put together, we may as well just be painting the walls, or laying the bricks coursing.

The Tate modern extension certainly looks like a well decorated building. I will be interested to understand the full architecture, structure, internal workings and all, to see if how the architect has tied everything together.

I’ll post more on my further explorations.