Tate Modern Switch House

Beneath the Switch House building – named after the part of the original power station the new building occupies – its oil tanks have reopened as a space for performance art.

Entered through a gigantic chamber of rough-and-ready aged concrete, these spaces, once the working hub of the power station, have created vast echoing drums, while also becoming the foundations for the building above, and influencing its ziggurat-like shape.

From this industrial space, visitors ascend into the new gallery space via a curving staircase, which twists up through the floors. Around the building there are small nooks for respite and larger spaces to meet and wait. In these spaces, where padded seats are placed at the windows inviting contemplation, the concrete structure is revealed, cutting a void up though the building’s many levels.

The extension houses three new levels of gallery space, with tall slot windows and rooflights at the fourth level providing natural daylight.