Natural History. Herzog & de Meuron

Edited by Philip Ursprung; CCA, Montreal With Essays by: Carrie Asman, Georges Didi-Huberman, Kurt W. Forster, Boris Groys, Ulrike Meyer Stump, Peggy Phelan, Thomas Ruff, Rebecca Schneider, Adolf Max Vogt and Jeff Wall. Herzog & de Meuron test the boundaries between architecture and art to a greater extent than other contemporary architects. Their interest in surface and material, opacity and transparency and the function and variability of images makes architecture speak – not just in quotations and typologies, but by continually redefining raw materials. Their buildings seem to exist simply to present those mysterious and beautiful moments when material is transformed into meaning. This publication mirrors the narrative structure of a 19th century natural history encyclopaedia.It confronts the architects´ work with the art-works and themes they have most often addressed, and also with artists´ views of that architectural work.