Architectural drawings of Tate Modern in the print media

Abstract

This thesis focuses on the project evolution of Tate Modern (London), a successful museum renovated by Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron (H&dM). However, it starts with a different approach: evaluating the drawings from a media perspective. By examining the drawings published by various print media including professional magazines and books over different period, the thesis covers the project spanning over 20 years, from the competition in 1994 to its second realization in 2016 and subsequent developments to the present day, encompassing two distinct phases: renovation (TM1) and extension (TM2). Drawings selected cover conventional types such as floor plans, sections, elevations, master plans etc. As drawing is the main language for architects, each type of drawing conveys distinct information. Collectively, they provide a comprehensive understanding of the project. For readers, they serve as significant tools to understand architectural projects. Throughout the years, the drawings of tate modern in each project phase are published by one of the magazines continuously almost every single year, from the early publication by ANY in 1996, several times by Spanish El Croquis, once by German Detail, etc. Forming a chronology where the evolution of drawings is obvious. Meanwhile, Tate Modern is regarded by Herzog & de Meuron as their core project in the development of the firm. During the long collaboration with the Tate, they gradually became capable of doing international projects and gained fame globally. Not a coincidence, three chronologies overlap: first is the evolution of the project Tate Modern; the other is evolution of drawings in print media publications; and the third is the development of architects and the firm. Through such juxtaposition, we can see there are subtle influence and interactions between one another. Print media is a special type of publication compared with other the popular internet based media nowadays on account of its distinguished features like its physical materility, restriction on pages and format, periodicity, and editorial decision. For this reason, compared with original archives, print media, especially magazines, could only cover part of the story. But when we compare between various paperbacks, it is obvious that drawings are selected or neglected, same set of drawings are presented in different styles under various editorial decisions, arranged in different typology, graphic design, layout, and image-text relations and distributions. As far as accessibility to local and online libraries, publications that have published the entire project of Tate Modern are collected as many as possible, at the end being sufficient to develop a understanding of the essential stages of the project evolution. Simultaneously, in order to achieve a better understanding of reasons behind differences between versions of drawing types, this thesis combs through the versions according to time, discover several "cuts" in the project evolution which then become essential phases to understand the evolution process. By overlapping the chronologies of versions of drawings and the development of H&deM office, we can also find out how the versions of published drawings are related to their management. After all, it is a journey of discovering how architects present a single project in different period and publications. The methology by tracing architectural drawings through media is potential to explore more contemporary and historical projects.