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Herzog & de Meuron chosen to design Hong Kong’s M+ art museum

Hong Kong Secretary for Home Affairs Tsang Tak-sing, left, architect Pierre de Meuron, cultural district Executive Director Lars Nittve and Hong Kong Chief Secretary Carrie Lam with a model of M+ museum in Hong Kong.
Hong Kong Secretary for Home Affairs Tsang Tak-sing, left, architect Pierre de Meuron, cultural district Executive Director Lars Nittve and Hong Kong Chief Secretary Carrie Lam with a model of M+ museum in Hong Kong.
(Kin Cheung / Associated Press)
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Hong Kong’s M+, the long-awaited art museum to be built in the city’s West Kowloon Cultural District, officially has an architecture team. The Swiss firm Herzog & de Meuron has been selected to design the museum, along with the London-Hong Kong firm TFP Farrells.

M+ is scheduled to be completed in 2017 and will be a key part of the city’s new cultural district, a waterfront development that will serve as home to visual and performing arts organizations. Planners hope the $642-million museum will become one of the world’s top modern and contemporary art destinations on the level of the Centre Pompidou in Paris and the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Herzog & de Meuron said it was selected based on a recommendation from an international jury. (The other contenders included Renzo Piano, Toyo Ito and the Japanese firm SANAA.) The firm’s highest-profile Asia project is the Bird’s Nest stadium in Beijing for the 2008 summer Olympic Games.

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The M+ announcement was made Friday in Hong Kong, with local officials in attendance and a model of the design unveiled to the public. The finished museum will sit on Victoria Harbor at the edge of a planned park.

The West Kowloon Cultural District, led by Lars Nittve, is being designed by the British architecture firm Foster + Partners. The development is one of the largest and most anticipated cultural projects in Asia.

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