Innovatia

GALLERY

A ‘paper architect’ Hadid went on to work for Zenghelis and Kool- haas at their Office for Metropolitan Architec- ture in Rotterdam. Hadid became a naturalised citizen of the United Kingdom, and in 1979 set up her own firm – Zaha Hadid Architects (ZHA) – in London. A few years later she gained interna- tional recognition with her competition-winning entry for the Peak, a leisure and recreational centre in Hong Kong. Her design was a “horizon- tal skyscraper” that moved down the hillside site – but it was never realised in physical form. Hadid became known as a ‘paper architect’ - her designs were too avant-garde to move be- yond the sketch phase. Often executed as beau- tiful acrylic paintings, inspired by the works of the Russian suprematist artist Kazimir Malevich, they were instead exhibited in museums as works of art. “They did not depict anything that could be conventionally identified as a building, but in- stead showed jagged landscapes in which walls and roofs, inside and outside, ground plan and cross section, merged seamlessly one into an- other. They were more like Piranesi dreamscapes than rational proposals for orthogonal buildings. But these were not abstractions or fantasies: they were the product of Hadid’s exploration of new ways to imagine how space might work,” wrote Deyan Sudjic in The Guardian in 2016. Another ambitious but unbuilt project was Ha- did’s plan for an opera house in Cardiff, Wales. In 1994 her design was chosen as the best by a competition jury, but the funding body refused to pay for it, and the commission was given to a less ambitious project. In response, Hadid asked: “Do they want nothing but mediocrity?” Alongside her radical designs, Hadid earned

urban change. Alongside them, new buildings influenced by international trends began to dot the cityscape. The styles ranged from neoclas- sical and Art Deco to mid-century modern de- signs, reflecting the cosmopolitan aspirations of the era. Hadid’s early exposure to the contrasting ar- chitectural styles of Baghdad, and childhood travels with her father, are said to have influ- enced her artistic sensibilities and nurtured her passion for pushing the boundaries of design. In the 1960s, Hadid attended boarding schools in England and Switzerland. She excelled in mathematics and later studied the subject at the American University of Beirut. In 1972 she moved to London to study at the Architectural Association School of Architecture, where she honed her skills under the tutelage of influential mentors such as Rem Koolhaas and Elia Zeng- helis. Hadid developed a unique perspective on the relationship between mathematical princi- ples and architectural design; this fusion of dis- ciplines would become a hallmark of her work. When she graduated, Koolhaas described her as “a planet in her own orbit”. ‘We called her the inventor of the 89 degrees. Nothing was ever at 90 degrees. She had spectacular vision. All the buildings were exploding into tiny little piec- es,” he said of her wildly imaginative designs. Koolhaas recalled that she was less interest- ed in details, such as staircases: “The way she drew a staircase you would smash your head against the ceiling, and the space was reduc- ing and reducing, and you would end up in the upper corner of the ceiling. She couldn’t care about tiny details. Her mind was on the broad- er pictures—when it came to the joinery she knew we could fix that later. She was right.”

Heydar Aliyev Center in Azerbaijan

Beijing Daxing International Airport

London 2012 Olympic Aquatics Centre

Al Janoub Stadium Qatar

INNOVATIA

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