For the Walker Art Center Expansion, the client – represented by Director Kathy Halbreich and Chief Curator Richard Flood – did not aim simply to increase the exhibition area, like so many other museums did in the nineties, but primarily to give the public more room, more room for urban living inspired by the variety and richness of contemporary art. Their main concerns became the greatest strengths of the projects, i.e. the public spaces within the building, the places of an encounter. Together we decided to call them the “Town Square.” And of course that included the theater, the Performing Arts Space, which we did not design as a neutral box but rather in the tradition of North American movie houses and cabaret theater. It was to be a real piece of architecture, like an independent, self-contained building recognizable as such from the outside. Pictorial and performing arts can be interwoven here in entirely unexpected and innovative ways. In search for a suitable form and surface finish for the new tower, the possibilities of textile qualities, planar volumes, crinkling and cut-outs are explored. 175 Walker Art Center, Expansion Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA Project 1999-2002, realization 2003-2005 Photo 1 © Peter Tolkin Photo 2 © Duccio Malagamba Photo 3 © Herzog & de Meuron #hdm_completeworks #hdm_175 #herzogdemeuron