TA+LK by Herzog & De Meuron

Jacques Herzog, Jacques and Pierre de Meuron, winners of the prestigious Pritzker Prize in 2018. Also partner Merced. Capital David conference. Um, well first of all I thought at the same time it was an honor and also a complete pain to introduce Jacques Herzog for the simple reason that I don't think Herzog & de Meuron and Jacques Herzog need no introduction. I think this picture already speaks for itself. However, I had collected three pictures: one by Aldo Rossi, one of Robert Venturi, and one of a very beautiful project they did in Natal about 10 years ago. Why did I bring these three pictures? While Rossi was thinking or writing or just after writing Architecture of the City, he was building in the outskirts. He was building that school. And that's interesting. Now when Robert Venturi was writing Complexity and Contradiction, he was creating his fire station first with RA and then of course with Scott Brown, and he was making that fire station beautifully depicted by Bas Princen in Columbus, Indiana. And as a third, a plan and a section of this fantastic project of Herzog in Natal. I think they finished it in 2014. Now that project totally designed and built pro bono, essentially a little sports center, cultural center, community center in the very Natal where only a wall and a roof were their own difficult whole, some sort of urban fact. Only in my opinion they could develop because they expressed through this 47 years of storied career a desire to make their own specific gravity, their specific objects able to transcend a context and to create a civic gesture. So for that reason alone I'm very happy to be able to introduce and to give the word to Jacques Herzog. Thank you.