The opening of M+ is just around the corner! M+ Museum, Asia’s first global museum of contemporary visual culture in Hong Kong’s West Kowloon Cultural District, is set to open to the public on Friday, 12 November 2021.

For the M+ project, Herzog & de Meuron have formed a design team with TFP Farrells as local partner architect and with Arup as an engineering consultant. This global team combines wide international perspective with deep local knowledge of Hong Kong and comprehensive experience in the development of the West Kowloon Cultural District site.
The M+ has been trapped in a seemingly never-ending cycle of postponements. Multiple factors (protracted pauses in construction, cost overruns, high-profile resignations, and COVID-19 to name a few) have contributed to the multiple delays in M+’s long, winding, and often controversy-riddled path to realization.

M+’s expansive collection is housed in a nearly 65,000 sqm (700,000-square-foot) landmark facility on the Victoria Harbour waterfront designed by Herzog & de Meuron in partnership with TFP Farrells and Arup. Construction on the 18-story, terra cotta-clad museum tower, which resembles an upside-down “T” and includes a total of 33 galleries spread across 17,000 sqm (183,000-square-feet ) of exhibition space, first began in 2014. The museum was originally slated to open in 2017.
 
“For art to enter into the life of a city like Hong Kong it has to come from below, from its own foundations. Our M+ Project does exactly that, by literally emerging from the city's underground."
Jacques Herzog.

Construction on the museum building finally wrapped up in March of this year, several months after officials within the West Kowloon Cultural District announced in October 2020 what was to be a final projected opening of autumn 2021. A full postponement-free year later, that projection has held true with the announcement of the November 12 opening date just last week.
 
“M+ was founded in Hong Kong with an ambitious mission to create a new kind of multidisciplinary cultural institution dedicated to visual culture”

“No other museum has created a team, cultivated expertise, and invested resources and infrastructure to realise such a transformative vision on this scale. Compared to leading modern art museums in the West, M+ will look very different, because our vantage point on this side of the world is distinct. This is a multidisciplinary contemporary collection, grounded in Asia and like no other in the world.”
Doryun Chong, deputy director, curatorial, and chief curator of M+ in a statement.

The spaces range from the conventional white cube, reconfigurable spaces, screening rooms and multipurpose facilities to so-called third spaces and even an “Industrial Space". It was the special request for this “Industrial Space” that motivated the architects to take a closer look at the specificity of the centre’s future location.

The opening of M+’s permanent new home will include a half-dozen thematic exhibitions drawn from different focus areas of the museum’s massive collection including visual artworks, film, design objects, architectural projects, and archival items. As described by M+, the six inaugural exhibitions are:

- Hong Kong.- Here and Beyond (Main Hall Gallery): Divided into four chapters, Here, Identities, Places and Beyond, the exhibition captures the city’s transformation and unique visual culture from the 1960s to the present;
   
- M+ Sigg Collection.- From Revolution to Globalisation (Sigg Galleries): A chronological survey of the development of contemporary Chinese art from the 1970s through the 2000s drawn from the M+ Sigg Collection;

- Things, Spaces, Interactions (East Galleries).- A thematic and chronological exploration of international design and architecture over the last seventy years and their relevance to our lives today;

- Individuals, Networks, Expressions (South Galleries).- A narrative of post-war international visual art told from the perspective of Asia;
    
- Antony Gormley. Asian Field (West Gallery).- An expansive installation of tens of thousands of clay figurines created by the world-renowned British sculptor together with over 300 villagers from a Guangdong village in five days in 2003, reflecting the country’s vast territory and population, and
    
- The Dream of the Museum (Courtyard Galleries).- A global constellation of conceptual art practices at the heart of M+’s unique Asian context.

What’s more, the museum will debut a series of special commissions throughout the museum complex including at/on its impossible-to-miss south facade featuring a dynamic LED system, soaring rooftop garden, grand staircase, and in a major installation venue known as The Found Space. Supported by five concrete-encased steel “mega-trusses” that lift the building above existing rail tunnels of the MTR Airport Express and Tung Chung Line, the subterranean Found Space anchors the new museum and provides a dramatic backdrop for hosting “dynamic rotating installations.” The M+ complex also features multiple shops and restaurants, three cinemas, a multimedia library, offices, a research center, and much more.
 
“We have made the underground tunnel of the Airport Express the raison d’être of a rough, large-scale exhibition universe that literally anchors the entire building in the ground. The tunnel has been uncovered, creating a radical space for art and design, installation and performance; it is a space of unprecedented potential and a challenge to artist and curator alike.”
Pierre de Meuron.

It is unclear if Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei’s Study of Perspective: Tian’anmen will be among the roughly 1,500 artworks on display when the museum opens to the public after the photograph was pulled from the M+ website. The museum told Artnet News in a statement that it is “reviewing the treatment of certain images of works having regard to the advice obtained from relevant authorities.”

“I firmly believe that the future history of the art museum will be written to a significant degree in Asia. Few institutions will be more pivotal to that story than M+, a brand new centre for visual culture and a world-class landmark for a great international city”, “M+ delivers the stories from our part of the world, told by voices participating in and influencing the global conversation.”
M+ director, Suhanya Raffel.

In addition to its exhibitions, M+ will host a series of talks, tours, performances, workshops, screenings, and more over the three weekends following the museum’s opening. Admission fees will be waived for valid ID-bearing Hong Kong residents for M+’s first 12 months of operation.

More information

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Architects
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Herzog & de Meuron with TFP Farrells as local partner architect and with Arup as an engineering consultant.
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Project team
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Design Consultant.- Herzog & de Meuron. Executive Architect.- TFP Farrells. Structural. Engineering.- Arup. Mechanical Engineering.- Arup. Electrical Engineering.- Arup. Plumbing & Drainage Engineering.- Arup. Facade Engineering.- Arup. Lighting Engineering.- Arup. Acoustic Consultant.- Arup. Traffic Consultant.- Arup.
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Collaborators
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Landscape Design.- Vogt Landscape Architects, Zurich, Switzerland. Facade Media Screen Design.- iArt, Basel, Switzerland. Art Storage & Conservation Consultant.- Prevart, Zurich, Switzerland. Signage Design.- Cartlidge Levene, London, United Kingdom. Signage Execution.- Atelier Pacific, Hong Kong.
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Area
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Site area.- 25,000 sqm. M+ Total Gross Floor Area (GFA).- 65,000 sqm. Display spaces.- 17,000 sqm. Learning Hub 1,200 sqm. Research Centre 1,500 sqm.
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Data set
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Number of Levels.- 18. Building dimensions.- 130 x 111 x 94 metres.
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Dates
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Competition.- 2012-2013. Project.- 2013-2020. Planned opening.- 12 November 2021.
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Location
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West Kowloon Cultural District. 38 Museum Drive, Kowloon, Hong Kong.
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Photography
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Herzog & de Meuron Architekten is a Swiss architecture firm, founded and headquartered in Basel, Switzerland in 1978. The careers of founders and senior partners Jacques Herzog (born 1950), and Pierre de Meuron (born 1950), closely paralleled one another, with both attending the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zürich. They are perhaps best known for their conversion of the giant Bankside Power Station in London to the new home of the Tate Museum of Modern Art (2000). Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron have been visiting professors at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design since 1994 (and in 1989) and professors at ETH Zürich since 1999. They are co-founders of the ETH Studio Basel – Contemporary City Institute, which started a research programme on processes of transformation in the urban domain.

Herzog & de Meuron is a partnership led by five Senior Partners – Jacques Herzog, Pierre de Meuron, Christine Binswanger, Ascan Mergenthaler and Stefan Marbach. An international team of 38 Associates and about 362 collaborators.

Herzog & de Meuron received international attention very early in their career with the Blue House in Oberwil, Switzerland (1980); the Stone House in Tavole, Italy (1988); and the Apartment Building along a Party Wall in Basel (1988).  The firm’s breakthrough project was the Ricola Storage Building in Laufen, Switzerland (1987).  Renown in the United States came with Dominus Winery in Yountville, California (1998). The Goetz Collection, a Gallery for a Private Collection of Modern Art in Munich (1992), stands at the beginning of a series of internationally acclaimed museum buildings such as the Küppersmühle Museum for the Grothe Collection in Duisburg, Germany (1999). Their most recognized buildings include Prada Aoyama in Tokyo, Japan (2003); Allianz Arena in Munich, Germany (2005); the new Cottbus Library for the BTU Cottbus, Germany (2005); the National Stadium Beijing, the Main Stadium for the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing, China; VitraHaus, a building to present Vitra’s “Home Collection“, Weil am Rhein, Germany (2010); and 1111 Lincoln Road, a multi-storey mixed-use structure for parking, retail, a restaurant and a private residence in Miami Beach, Florida, USA (2010), the Actelion Business Center in Allschwil/Basel, Switzerland (2010). In recent years, Herzog & de Meuron have also completed projects such as the New Hall for Messe Basel Switzerland (2013), the Ricola Kräuterzentrum in Laufen (2014), which is the seventh building in a series of collaborations with Ricola, with whom Herzog & de Meuron began to work in the 1980s; and the Naturbad Riehen (2014), a public natural swimming pool. In April 2014, the practice completed its first project in Brazil: the Arena do Morro in the neighbourhood of Mãe Luiza, Natal, is the pioneering project within the wider urban proposal “A Vision for Mãe Luiza”.

Herzog & de Meuron have completed 6 projects since the beginning of 2015: a new mountain station including a restaurant on top of the Chäserrugg (2262 metres above sea level) in Toggenburg, Switzerland; Helsinki Dreispitz, a residential development and archive in Münchenstein/Basel, Switzerland; Asklepios 8 – an office building on the Novartis Campus in Basel, Switzerland; the Slow Food Pavilion for Expo 2015 in Milan, Italy; the new Bordeaux stadium, a 42’000 seat multifunctional stadium for Bordeaux, France; Miu Miu Aoyama, a 720 m² boutique for the Prada-owned brand located on Miyuki Street, across the road from Prada Aoyama, Tokyo, Japan.

In many projects the architects have worked together with artists, an eminent example of that practice being the collaboration with Rémy Zaugg, Thomas Ruff and with Michael Craig-Martin.

Professionally, the Herzog & de Meuron partnership has grown to become an office with over 120 people worldwide. In addition to their headquarters in Basel, they have offices in London, Munich and San Francisco. Herzog has explained, “We work in teams, but the teams are not permanent. We rearrange them as new projects begin. All of the work results from discussions between Pierre and me, as well as our other partners, Harry Gugger and Christine Binswanger. The work by various teams may involve many different talents to achieve the best results which is a final product called architecture by Herzog & de Meuron.”

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