Flick the Switch

Switch House at Tate Modern has opened to much global acclaim.

Regarded by many as the most significant new cultural building in London since the British Library, the building allows 60% more of Tate Modern’s collection to be displayed.

Max Fordham served as environmental engineer on the project alongside internationally-renowned Swiss architects, Herzog & de Meuron. Senior partner at Max Fordham and project engineer, Mark Nutley is delighted with the result. ‘It really is a triumph,’ he enthused. ‘The team have worked so hard, invested so much, into making this a place London can be proud of. I’m sure people will fall in love with it like we have.’

Nutley remarked that the environmental engineering is designed to be as unobtrusive as possible. ‘Architecturally the Switch House is obviously stunning and the internal spaces are poised to display the art to greatest effect,’ he noted. ‘But the environmental engineering is designed to go largely unnoticed. There is wonderfully inventive thinking invested in the design to help make the building ideal for art, comfortable for visitors and environmentally sustainable.’

A number of innovative engineering solutions have been employed on the project, chief among them the use of groundwater trapped in the Thames river gravels ten meters below the site. Max Fordham's engineers developed a method of extracting heat from the water and rejecting it back, as part of the building's temperature control strategy. ‘The heating and cooling strategy was driven by an ambition to reduce energy consumption to as low a level as realistically feasible,’ Nutley explains. ‘This is a truly pioneering approach and the first time groundwater extracted in this fashion has been used to provide cooling at a commercial scale in London.’

Architecturally bold and beautifully engineered, the Switch House at Tate Modern is a gripping new addition to the London skyline. It enhances the capital’s already rich cultural life with a building of rare quality and provides an exemplary environment for patrons and artwork alike.