The two architects graduated in 1975 at ETH Zurich and Harvard University. Both work side by side with the teaching activity to the purely professional one; are professors at Harvard from 1989 to 1994 and from 1999 at the Polytechnic Eth of Basel. Their fame is mainly due to the conversion of the Bankside power station in London into the Tate Modern. In 2002 they designed the Allianz Arena with a very large underground car park, the largest in Europe, the covering of the facades was made of recyclable material. On February 21, 2007, Herzog and De Meuron received the Royal Gold Medal 2007 in London, as a recognition of the contribution made by the two designers to cities and architecture from around the world, from their first works conducted in Switzerland to the more recent works from Barcelona and Tokyo.