Transfiguration : Herzog & de Meuron

House in dry stones in a concrete structure crude oi, signal box dressed in brass small strips, building of housing similar to a sideboard(buffet) of wood pushed against a wall: an imperceptible strangeness allows to grant to these commonplace constructions the aura which Walter Benjamin reserved for the oeuvres of art. As if Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron felt the uncontrollable need to transfigure the most trivial building, and to do the same for the gestures which relate to it and eventually are similar to real religious rites. The inhabitants of the building of the street of the Swiss in Paris can show of it, who have to raise hands with angles straight ahead and push their heavy shutters of spread metal, if they want to open them or to close them, by imitating the hieratic characters of the Egyptian paint(painting). There is not a house anymore, a signal box anymore, a building anymore of housing, more tour either … The Tower Triangle will know how to disappear in clouds and reappear as a mountain in front of the horizon. More than a construction, it is the ground which will allow the Parisians to carry out pilgrimages towards high plateaus where from they will contemplate their city as the inhabitants of Los Angeles can, since Mulholland Drive, admire theirs.