Tate Modern Dance

edited by Sheila Kim -- Interior Design, 3/1/2003 12:00:00 AM

Herzog & de Meuron is at it again. The Pritzker Prize– winning Swiss firm behind London's Tate Modern has completed a new home for the prestigious Laban school of contemporary dance—slightly farther down the south bank of the Thames, in desolate Deptford. An original construction, the 25,600-square-foot Laban Centre houses 13 instructional studios, three landscaped indoor courtyards, a dance library, and a 300-seat theater for student and professional performances. British artist Michael Craig-Martin collaborated on the building's semitranslucent skin of polycarbonate panels, which glow in Craig-Martin's signature turquoise, lime, and magenta. Enormous windows punctuating all four facades offer glimpses of grace in action.