Calcutta, May 12: The celebrated Herzog & de Meuron will create a museum of modern art in Calcutta, the first project to be taken up by a world-class architect in India since Le Corbusier agreed to build Chandigarh half a century ago.

The Basel-based Herzog & de Meuron, which built the Tate Modern in London and the Beijing Olympic stadium, will erect the Kolkata Museum of Modern Art (KMOMA) in New Town Rajarhat.

An agreement was signed this evening between the trustees of KMOMA and Harry Gugger, partner, Herzog & de Meuron, who will head the Calcutta project estimated to cost $50 million (over Rs 200 crore). Delhi-based architect S.K. Das will execute the project, and Gugger, who had earlier described his firm as a “control freak”, will oversee. Gugger will be assisted by Edmun Choy.

Gugger, who has received the Meret Oppenheim prize and has been a professor at EPF Lausanne since 2005, said after the ceremonies that he would have preferred to work in the city itself “to redirect the energy to the old town and its heritage”, but that, he added, was “politically impossible”.

He regretted that cities were losing their “specificness”, which was being steamrollered by “Americanisation”. It was important to be global but it was equally important not to lose sight of the local. However, Gugger conceded that the challenge before them was whether they could turn the museum into a landmark in New Town. He stressed that the museum should be “Kolkata-specific”.

Herzog & de Meuron, Gugger said earlier in the day, has no signature style and creates designs minuscule and mammoth depending on people’s and users’ needs. “We are really hands-on in execution. We are lucky that the situation abroad triggers new ideas. Cultures are different and the climate here is one of the parameters.”

He recounted how a sheikh in Abu Dhabi had commissioned the firm to design a mosque that was already being built.

"The design we proposed was very nice. But it was not implemented. Somehow, we did not understand the culture of negotiation in that country. So, now we have a cultural ambassador."

In Beijing, the company had Uli Sigg, the former ambassador of Switzerland, and Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, who told them "what we should do to be understood in China".

The KMOMA trust was set up in 2003 and the venture was meant to involve the state and the central government and the private sector. The state government has allotted Rs 135 crore, including the 10-acre Rajarhat plot, for the project. Dilip Kumar Chakraborty, the principal secretary to the department of information and cultural affairs in the state, has promised all government support.

Rakhi Sarkar, the managing trustee of KMOMA, said the Indian modern art movement was born in Calcutta and the museum's objective will be to collect, preserve and exhibit a national collection of fine art ranging from the 19th century to the contemporary.

There will be space for multidisciplinary interaction as well to encourage an "expansive dialogue".

The museum will have a research and educational dimension. It will build a database and a library on the arts.

The four wings of KMOMA will house a national gallery, whose focus will be Indian visual art of both the colonial and post-colonial phases; western galleries representing art from the West and West Asia; Far Eastern galleries on art works from Saarc countries as well as from Japan, China and Korea, and an academic wing.