Mountain high

Architecture firm Herzog & de Meuron brings a city-chic aesthetic to a new Swiss alpine generation with an outpost atop Titlis

The vast influence of Swiss architecture firm Herzog & de Meuron on the culture of contemporary building couldn't be stronger – particularly in Hong Kong, where its design for the world's largest museum site, M+, finally topped out last month and will open in 2020, complementing the two structures the firm enacted as part of Hong Kong's Tai Kwun art and lifestyle project at the former prison and police headquarters in Central.

Among its numerous illustrious projects, Herzog & de Meuron was also responsible for the overhaul of Tate Modern in London and the giant Bankside Power Station. And all that before the monumental "Bird's Nest" Beijing Olympic Stadium in 2008, which US architect Frank Gehry called "the greatest architectural project since the Colosseum in Rome"; Gehry also wrote a letter to Herzog & de Meuron telling them as much when he first laid eyes on the imposing structure.

Meanwhile, the Basel-based Pritzker Prize-winning practice, founded in 1978, continues to cross-platform, whether it's working with Miuccia Prada for store openings in Tokyo, for menswear collaborations with Prada, or for the Serpentine Gallery in London and 56 Leonard Street in New York.