Ten international cities to be built in Tate Modern's Turbine Hall

Francesca Martin
Wednesday February 7, 2007
The Guardian

It's
had giant sugarcubes, a blood-red sunset and swirling fairground slides
- and now the Turbine Hall in Tate Modern is going architectural.

This
June, inspired by last year's Venice Architecture Biennale, the London
museum's grand entrance hall will host an exhibition highlighting the
architectural aspects of 10 international cities.

The Venice
Biennale took the theme of 16 meta-cities that had "defined new issues
and undergone profound transformations". The Tate is taking the idea
further by featuring new commissions from top architects. It is thought
participants could include big names such as Zaha Hadid.

The show will be Tate's second foray
into the architectural arena, following the 2005 Herzog & De Meuron
show, which featured 250 design models by the renowned architects.
Herzog & De Meuron also drew up the controversial cut-glass
ziggurat plans for the Tate Modern extension - plans that were recently
defended by Tate director and architecture enthusiast Sir Nicholas
Serota. "One of the disappointments of the millennium was that there
were no new, modern buildings," he said. "This will be leading-edge
architecture, and like nothing we have seen in London before."