Switching it up at Tate Modern
Shot of the new Switch House against surrounding glass tower blocks
It is incontestable that the coming of Tate Modern has transformed Southwark. Since 2000, the area around the old Bankside Power Station has sprouted with glossy, high-rise office or flat complexes, fashion shops, chain restaurants, pop-up markets, performers and more. The gallery has made the area an essential joining point between the cultural Southbank hub around the Royal Festival Hall and the foodies heaven surrounding Borough Market and London Bridge. It bustles with tourists and Londoners alike and hums with a sense of life in the making.
But Tate Modern has also established a number of crucial examples for the museum sector more broadly: the powerful gallery brand, the trendy eating and drinking spots and, perhaps most of all, the cavernous spaces built as much for social space and circulation as for immense art installations. I imagine that as many people come to Tate Modern to enjoy these edgy but welcoming spaces as to see the art.
This is now all the more evident in the new extension, which opened last month, and I belatedly visited last weekend. The new extension, called the 'Switch House', rises in a twisting brick tower to the south of the original power station, now named 'The Boiler House'. It sits above the 'Tanks' connecting these into a more coherent space, and connecting to the old Turbine Halls on three levels.
The extension adds a significant amount of permanent gallery space, which has opened with impressive displays themed around 'Living Cities', 'Between Object and Architecture' and 'Performer and Participant'. Each has a dedicated room building out of Tate's Bloomberg Connects, an interesting decision to limit the digital engagement to specific spaces in the museum, linking out to the wealth of online possibility. There is also space for a changing display of the 'Artists Rooms' jointly donated to Tate and the National Galleries of Scotland by Anthony d'Offay in 2008. The opening 'Room' focuses on Louise Bourgeois, a neat reference back to her being the first artist to take over the Turbine Hall when Tate Modern originally opened in 2000.
But what is most striking about the new Switch House is the building and its monumental spaces. Sweeping concrete stairs take you from the tanks up to the first floor, the twisting, angled walls of the tower create a wealth of areas for circulation, rest and conversation as visitors move around the building. An entire floor is devoted to the 'Tate Exchange' providing space for a rolling programme of artists to think and debate about 'big questions' (it launches in September). Most strikingly, a new public viewing level on the 10th floor allows breath-taking views over London, and makes Tate a key visitor attraction in London simply for this free offer.
The Switch House seems to be confidently as much about how people use the gallery spaces as about the art that they might see there, about making social connections. I was struck by an interview that Tate Modern's new director, Frances Morris, gave to the Guardian in April, where she discussed going to her local museum as a girl when it rained (incidentally my own National Maritime Museum!) and wanting the new Switch House to help make Tate Modern a similarly welcoming space for its local Southwark residents, not just tourists. That's an aspiration for all museums that I hope these new spaces at Tate will prove to be possible.