Herzog & de Meuron is the Swiss architecture firm founded in 1978 in Basel by Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron (both b. 1950, Basel; both ETH Zurich-trained) — joint Pritzker Architecture Prize laureates 2001, RIBA Royal Gold Medal 2007. The most architecturally significant European firm to have designed substantial residential work in Manhattan in the contemporary era, with NYC residential commissions at 56 Leonard Street in Tribeca (2017) and 160 Leroy Street in the West Village (2018). The practice continues under the founding partners across approximately fifty years, with offices in Basel, Hamburg, London, Madrid, New York, and Hong Kong.
The Swiss firm whose 56 Leonard Street and 160 Leroy Street produced the contemporary Manhattan residential vocabulary most architecturally distinct from the prewar tradition — designed by the Pritzker Prize-winning practice whose work has substantially reshaped late-twentieth-and-early-twenty-first-century architecture globally.
At a glance
| Founded | 1978 |
| Founding partners | Jacques Herzog (b. 1950, Basel); Pierre de Meuron (b. 1950, Basel) |
| Headquarters | Basel, Switzerland (with offices in Hamburg, London, Madrid, New York, Hong Kong) |
| Pritzker Architecture Prize | 2001 (joint award to Herzog and de Meuron) |
| RIBA Royal Gold Medal | 2007 |
| Praemium Imperiale (Architecture) | 2007 |
| Major NYC residential work | 56 Leonard Street (2017); 160 Leroy Street (2018) |
Why Herzog & de Meuron matters
Herzog & de Meuron is the most architecturally significant European firm to have designed substantial residential work in Manhattan in the contemporary era. Founded in 1978 in Basel by the Swiss architects Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron — both born in Basel in 1950, both trained at the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule (ETH) Zurich, both still active principals nearly half a century into the firm's history — Herzog & de Meuron is one of a small number of architectural practices whose international body of work has shaped the architectural register of late-twentieth-and-early-twenty-first-century building production. The firm's New York residential commissions — 56 Leonard Street in Tribeca, completed 2017, and 160 Leroy Street in the West Village, completed 2018 — represent the firm's principal application of its architectural register to the contemporary Manhattan luxury residential market.
The firm's structural distinction within the contemporary architectural profession is twofold. First, the substantial intellectual coherence and continuity of the practice's work across nearly fifty years — the firm has not significantly diverged from its founding architectural concerns, has maintained the founding-partner leadership through its global expansion, and has produced its most-recognized work continuously across its history rather than concentrating in any particular period. Second, the firm's combination of substantial scale (the practice now employs approximately 500 architects across its global offices) with the architectural intentionality and craft characteristic of much smaller practices — a structural feature that has anchored the firm's continuing capacity to produce architecturally significant work at the institutional scale that the contemporary commission market increasingly requires.
For Manhattan residential buyers evaluating Herzog & de Meuron's 56 Leonard or 160 Leroy buildings, the architectural attribution is a substantive part of the buildings' structural premium. The firm's international architectural reputation, the intellectual and craft coherence of the practice's work, and the buildings' position within the firm's residential portfolio together produce a residential context that no other contemporary Manhattan residential building substantially replicates.
Founding and architectural philosophy
Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron met as schoolboys in Basel in the 1950s and were educated together through their secondary schooling. Both studied architecture at ETH Zurich in the 1970s, completing their formal training in 1975, and the two founded the practice that bears their names in Basel in 1978 — initially as a small architectural office working on Swiss residential and institutional commissions, with the firm's international practice developing across the subsequent decades.
The firm's architectural philosophy, articulated by Herzog and de Meuron across their continuing practice, has emphasized several recurring themes that distinguish the firm's work from much contemporary architectural production. The first is a substantive engagement with material — the specific physical character of the building's exterior and interior surfaces, the way the materials register against light, the relationship between material articulation and architectural form. The firm's work has frequently used material articulation as the principal architectural strategy: the copper-clad facade of the de Young Museum in San Francisco, the perforated metal exterior of the Allianz Arena in Munich, the brick lattice of the Tate Modern's Switch House extension, the architectural use of stacked cubic volumes at 56 Leonard Street. The second is an architectural concern for the relationship between the building and its specific site context — both physical (the building's relationship to surrounding topography, surrounding buildings, the urban-design context) and cultural (the building's relationship to local architectural history, the local craft tradition, the institutional context of the commission). The third is a distinctly non-formalist approach to architectural composition — the firm's buildings are typically organized around specific architectural ideas (the apartment-by-apartment differentiation of 56 Leonard, the bird's-nest woven steel form of the Beijing National Stadium, the wave-form roof of the Elbphilharmonie Hamburg) rather than around predetermined formal vocabularies.
The combination of these themes has anchored a body of work that has been substantially praised across the architectural press for its intellectual seriousness, its craft register, and the recognizable continuity of architectural concerns across the firm's global practice.
Major works: international portfolio
The firm's international practice across approximately fifty years includes a substantial portfolio of major civic, cultural, institutional, and residential commissions. The works listed below represent the firm's most-recognized commissions; the full body of work substantially exceeds this list.
Cultural institutions
Tate Modern (London, 2000). The firm's commission to convert the disused Bankside Power Station in central London into the Tate's principal modern and contemporary art museum was the project that anchored the firm's international reputation. The conversion preserved the original 1947 power station building (designed by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott) while inserting the substantial gallery infrastructure the museum's program required. The Tate Modern has become one of the most-visited museums in the world; the building's combination of the preserved industrial-architectural register and the museum-program insertion has become a defining reference for adaptive reuse of major industrial structures.
Tate Modern Switch House extension (London, 2016). The firm's substantial extension of the Tate Modern, completed sixteen years after the original conversion, added approximately 60 percent additional gallery and program space in a new building integrated with the original power station. The extension's distinctive perforated-brick facade has anchored the project's architectural identity.
de Young Museum (San Francisco, 2005). The reconstruction of the de Young Museum in Golden Gate Park after the original building's earthquake damage in 1989. The firm's design, with its substantial copper-clad exterior that will weather across the building's lifetime, anchored the museum's reopening and the broader civic restoration of the de Young's role in San Francisco's cultural infrastructure.
Walker Art Center expansion (Minneapolis, 2005). The firm's expansion of the Walker Art Center, adjacent to the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden, extended the museum's program at substantial scale.
M+ Museum (Hong Kong, 2021). The firm's design for the M+ Museum of contemporary visual culture in the West Kowloon Cultural District — Hong Kong's principal contemporary art museum. The building's substantial scale, the architectural composition that places the museum's program in dialogue with the Victoria Harbour waterfront, and the firm's interior design program anchored one of the most-significant cultural institutions to open in the past decade globally.
Elbphilharmonie Hamburg (2017). The firm's design for Hamburg's new concert hall, constructed atop a substantially preserved historic harbor warehouse on the Elbe River. The building's combination of the preserved-warehouse base, the dramatic wave-form glass extension above, and the substantial concert hall and amenity program produced one of the firm's most-discussed projects — both architecturally (the building's distinctive form has anchored the post-completion Hamburg architectural identity) and operationally (the building's construction extended across eleven years with substantial cost overruns and political controversy).
Sports and event venues
Beijing National Stadium ("Bird's Nest") (Beijing, 2008). The firm's design for the principal stadium of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, developed in collaboration with the Chinese artist Ai Weiwei as artistic consultant. The stadium's distinctive woven-steel external structure — which gave the building its informal "Bird's Nest" name in international architectural discourse — became one of the most-recognized stadium designs of the twenty-first century. The building has continued operation as a major Beijing event venue across the post-Olympic period.
Allianz Arena (Munich, 2005). The firm's design for the Munich football stadium that serves as the home venue for FC Bayern München. The building's distinctive translucent ETFE-cushion exterior, which can be illuminated in colors corresponding to the home team's identity, anchored the firm's reputation in major sports-venue commissions.
Residential and mixed-use
56 Leonard Street (New York, 2017). The firm's principal Manhattan residential project — covered in detail in our 56 Leonard Street building guide. The 60-story Tribeca tower, with its apartment-by-apartment-distinct architectural massing, produced one of the most architecturally significant contemporary Manhattan residential buildings.
160 Leroy Street (New York, 2018). The firm's second NYC residential project — a boutique West Village condominium at the corner of Leroy and Washington Streets, immediately adjacent to the Hudson River. Covered in detail in our 160 Leroy Street building guide.
1111 Lincoln Road (Miami Beach, 2010). The firm's design for a mixed-use building including a parking garage, retail, and residential, with the parking garage anchoring the architectural register through substantial concrete-frame articulation and the building's substantial open-air upper-floor parking levels.
VitraHaus (Weil am Rhein, Germany, 2010). The firm's design for the Vitra Design Campus's principal furniture showroom, with stacked house-form architectural volumes that provide both the showroom infrastructure and the building's distinctive architectural identity.
Cultural and commercial
Prada Aoyama (Tokyo, 2003). The firm's design for the Prada flagship store in Tokyo's Aoyama district, with its distinctive diagonally-tiled glass facade.
Dominus Estate Winery (Napa Valley, California, 1998). The firm's early American commission — a winery building constructed with gabion walls (large mesh containers filled with stones), an architectural approach unusual in the American context and influential on subsequent industrial-and-agricultural architectural practice.
Goetz Collection (Munich, 1992). One of the firm's earliest internationally-recognized commissions — a private gallery in Munich for the Goetz contemporary art collection.
The firm's New York residential portfolio
Herzog & de Meuron's New York City residential portfolio is substantively concentrated in the two completed downtown projects — 56 Leonard Street and 160 Leroy Street — both completed in the late 2010s and both representing the firm's principal application of its architectural register to the contemporary Manhattan luxury condominium market.
56 Leonard Street — the 60-story Tribeca tower at the corner of Leonard and Church Streets, completed 2017. The building's apartment-by-apartment-distinct architectural composition, the substantial cantilevered outdoor terrace configurations, the floor-to-ceiling glass walls, and the Anish Kapoor sculpture installed at the building's base entry plaza together constitute one of the firm's most-recognized residential projects globally and one of the most architecturally distinctive Manhattan residential buildings of the contemporary supertall era. The building's commercial reception, the substantial press coverage of the design, and the building's continuing position within the Manhattan downtown ultra-luxury residential market have anchored the firm's New York architectural reputation.
160 Leroy Street — the boutique West Village condominium at the corner of Leroy and Washington Streets, immediately adjacent to the Hudson River Park, completed 2018. The building's design — with its substantial irregular setback massing, the architecturally distinctive outdoor terrace configurations, and the building's calibration to the West Village historic-district context — produced the firm's second NYC residential project at substantially smaller scale than 56 Leonard but with comparable architectural intentionality. The building has anchored the West Village's contemporary residential register at the upper tier.
Beyond these two completed projects, the firm has been associated with various other New York commissions across the past two decades. Its non-residential New York work has included the Park Avenue Armory renovation (the firm's role as architects of the ongoing programming-and-preservation work at the historic 1881 building, beginning in approximately 2007 and continuing across the subsequent years), and various design proposals for projects that have not progressed to construction.
The firm's New York office, established in support of the practice's American commissions, continues to operate as one of the firm's principal international offices.
Working with Herzog & de Meuron
The firm continues to accept select residential commissions globally, with its substantial international workload prioritizing major institutional and cultural projects but with continuing capacity for selected residential projects at the appropriate scale and tier. The firm's residential commissions are typically negotiated through the firm's principal partners and their senior associates; the substantial design-and-construction timeline characteristic of the firm's work (the practice's larger projects routinely extend across 5–11 years from commission through completion) is a structural consideration for any prospective commission.
For buyers evaluating Herzog & de Meuron's existing NYC residential inventory — 56 Leonard Street and 160 Leroy Street — the firm's architectural significance is a substantive component of the buildings' structural premium. The buildings' apartment-by-apartment distinctness, the architectural craft register, and the firm's continuing international reputation together constitute a residential context that distinguishes these two buildings from the broader contemporary Manhattan luxury inventory.
Considering a Herzog & de Meuron-designed building?
The Roebling Team at Compass works the Manhattan trophy-tier new-development inventory as a structural element of our luxury practice — with substantive engagement in the architecturally significant downtown residential market that Herzog & de Meuron's 56 Leonard and 160 Leroy buildings anchor. We publish this architect profile because Manhattan residential buyers and sellers deserve architect-specific intelligence — the firm's broader international reputation, the architectural register, and the specific significance of the firm's NYC residential portfolio — not generic Tribeca or West Village commentary.
If you're considering a purchase or sale at 56 Leonard, 160 Leroy, or any of the broader contemporary new-development inventory anchored in significant contemporary architectural practice, a 30-minute consultation is the right starting point. We'll bring the full context this page provides plus the transactional specifics your situation requires — financial structuring, comparable analysis at the apartment line, the building-specific context, and the pacing strategy that fits your timeline.
Corey Cohen, Principal The Roebling Team at Compass
646.939.7375 · c.cohen@compass.com
Run the numbers
Related buildings
- 56 Leonard Street — the firm's principal Manhattan residential commission, the 60-story Tribeca tower with apartment-by-apartment-distinct architectural composition
- 160 Leroy Street — the firm's second NYC residential, the West Village boutique condominium
Related guides
- New Development in Manhattan: The 2016–2026 Research Guide — the broader context for the firm's NYC residential portfolio within the contemporary trophy-tier inventory
- Tribeca — Corridor Guide — the neighborhood context for 56 Leonard
- Greenwich Village — Corridor Guide — the neighborhood context for the West Village inventory
- Co-op vs Condo in Manhattan — the ownership-structure framing for new-development purchases
- Foreign-Buyer Guide — relevant for the international buyer demographic that the firm's residential commissions have attracted
This page reflects publicly available information on Herzog & de Meuron's practice, the architectural press coverage of the firm's major commissions across its history, the firm's published portfolio, and The Roebling Team transaction experience with the firm's NYC residential inventory. The Roebling Team at Compass does not represent Herzog & de Meuron or the firm's institutional or residential commissioning clients. Specific project attributions, completion years, and current operational details should be confirmed independently. © 2026 The Roebling Team at Compass.
Buildings designed by Herzog & de Meuron
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