#de meuron

...we are more interested in the direct physical and emotional impact, like the sound of music or the scent of a flower. We are not looking for meaning in our buildings. A building cannot be read like a book, it does not have any credits, subtitles or labels like pictures in a gallery. A building is a building. In that sense, we are absolutely anti-representational. The strength of our buildings is the immediate, visceral impact they have on a visitor. For us that is all that is important in architecture.

Why a Kabinett? The term Kabinett stands for something intimate, something that has emerged and been preserved with great care over the course of many decades and, above all, something that should remain fruitfully workable despite substantial holdings. The Jacques Herzog und Pierre de Meuron Kabinett, Basel, is a charitable foundation established in 2015, comprising of three sub-Kabinetts—Architektur, Kunst, and Foto—with the aim to keep these holdings intact as a cultural asset and to work with them in their specificity. Our goal, first and foremost, is to have the estates permanently domiciled in Basel in their entirety, such that they may contribute to the cultural substance of our native city, which has been a lifelong inspiration to us. An extremely diverse concentration of mutually complementary parts is integrated into the Kabinett, representing the multiplicity and openness that has always been crucial to our collaborative approach.

ORDOS 100