Jacques Herzog was born in Basel in 1950 and studied architecture at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETH Zurich) from 1970 to 1975 with Aldo Rossi and Dolf Schnebli. He received his degree in architecture in 1975, establishing his own firm with Pierre de Meuron in 1978. In 1977, he was an assistant to Prof. Dolf Schnebli, and in 1983 he was Visiting Tutor at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, US. Since 1994, he has been a visiting professor at Harvard University, and since 1999 has been a professor at the Swiss Federal Polytechnic (ETH Zurich), where he co-founded ETH Studio Basel: Contemporary City Institute. In 2001, Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron received the Pritzker Architecture Prize, followed by the Praemium Imperiale in 2007. Currently, their office employs around 250 architects working on more than 40 projects worldwide, with branch offices in London, Hamburg, New York, Barcelona, and Beijing.

Herzog & de Meuron received international attention with projects such as the Dominus Winery, Napa Valley (1998); the Tate Modern, London (2000); the Prada Epicenter, Tokyo (2003); Schaulager Basel, Laurenz Foundation (2003); and more recently, the de Young Museum in San Francisco (2005). Current projects include the National Stadium for the Olympic Games of 2008 in Beijing (2007) and the Elbe Philharmonic Hall in Hamburg (projected completion 2011). The new development for Transforming Tate Modern will be completed in 2012.