New York is enjoying an architectural boom, with new projects in development from a who’s who of the world’s most notable architects, but none are as eagerly anticipated as 40 Bond Street from Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron of Basel, Switzerland.

At a time when architecture is known for its decorators and sensation-seeking stunt men, Herzog & de Meuron stand apart as truly formidable innovators. They create buildings of extraordinary imagination, exploiting new technologies to the fullest while at the same time deeply respecting the eternal values of building. Their work continually pushes the envelope of the possible, while never losing sight of the building’s function and identity.

Herzog & de Meuron have been friends since childhood. They attended architecture school together and more than 20 years ago formed a professional partnership. They are known for a long run of spectacular achievements including the Olympic Stadium in Beijing, the Tate Modern at Bankside, London; Prada’s Tokyo store; the extension of the Walker Art Museum, Minneapolis; the new De Young Museum, San Francisco; and the new MOMA roof garden.

In 2001 they became the first team to win the Pritzker Prize, generally considered the Nobel Prize of architecture. Pritzker juror Carlos Jimenez wrote, "One of the most compelling aspects of work by Herzog & de Meuron is its capacity to astonish. They are able to transform what might otherwise be an ordinary shape, condition or material, into something truly extraordinary.

Jacques Herzog has compares their work to that of artist Andy Warhol: "He used common Pop images to say something new. That is exactly what we are interested in: to use well known forms and materials in a new way so that they become alive again ... We love to destroy the clichés of architecture… The strength of our buildings is the immediate, visceral impact they have on a visitor."

Herzog says of 40 Bond Street: "We like radical positions and we try to offer them. The idea of gates came to us first. It gave us a signature, a scale and an individuality. The gates introduce the scale of the townhouses. The question was what kind of structure or grid or image would they have on them. We tested different things and most of them looked too traditional but we then came up with the idea of something very chaotic which we thought could be seen as coming from urban street culture, where graffiti is part of the landscape. So we took graffiti and manipulated it on the computer, the result is radical but it was a classical process of transformation."

The extraordinary building began with a copied sample of the work of an anonymous human hand, a “wild style” script created on the fly with the magic marker, and it transformed it into a building for the ages.

Transformation is the essence of Herzog & de Meuron’s aesthetic and process. In 40 Bond Street they have created a building that draws tremendous energy and form from its surrounding buildings and even the environment of the street, transforming not just our ideas of a residential building, but how we live.