On the fourth floor a narrow bridge across the vast Turbine Hall links galleries in the new building to the existing one (renamed the Boiler House after its original function).
A sweeping concrete staircase spirals up from the former oil storage tanks, the first museum spaces dedicated to live art. The perforated brick facade and slit windows bring an airy feel to the clean concrete lines of the interior, which has been divided into spacious oak-floored concourses on one hand and discreet nooks on the other. Inside the new Switch House, all is industrial chic. Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron, who converted the defunct power station, have also designed the angular new building, which rises up ten stories from the site of the former Switch House and has a spectacular 360-degree viewing platform at the top. “Today we open not just an extension but genuinely a new Tate Modern with…a new view of the world as it has been over the past 120 years,” Tate’s director, Nicholas Serota, told a briefing of international journalists. Crucially, it provides 60 percent more space to accommodate the throngs of visitors to this secular cathedral of modern art. Resembling a twisted pyramid cloaked in latticed brickwork, Tate Modern’s handsome new addition complements the iconic original structure and offers a welcome change from the glassy sameness of much recent architecture. Tate Modern on Tuesday unveiled to the press its hotly anticipated £260 million ($375 million) expansion, the most significant new cultural building in Britain since the landmark opening in 2000 of its home in a power station–turned–art powerhouse on the banks of the river Thames.
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