Zaha Hadid Wins Veuve Cliquot Business Women Award
Zaha Hadid has been announced as the winner of the 41st Veuve Clicquot Business Woman Award at a ceremony in London on Monday. Now in its 41st year, the Veuve Clicquot Award was set up by the Champagne house to recognize the work of successful businesswomen worldwide, who embody their spirit of Madame Clicquot.
Madame Clicquot was a 19th Century businesswomen who, after being widowed at the age of 27, took the reigns of her husband’s Champagne business and became one of the first women to lead a male-dominated company. The company describes her as a women who was ‘proud and strong-willed’ who demanded “only one quality, the finest.” The award appraises the nominees under the headings of entrepreneurship, financial success, corporate social responsibility and whether or not they are seen as a role model to others.
Best Architect-Designed Products of Milan Design Week 2013
This week at the 52nd edition of the Salone Internazionale del Mobile in Milan, over 2,500 exhibitors showcased an endless collection of the latest international products and home-furnishing designs. Among them included a variety of elegant and intelligently designed items envisioned by some of our favorite architects. Continue after the break to scroll through a list of the best architect-designed products featured at the Milan Design Week 2013.
Zaha Hadid Receives Aenne Burda Award for Creative Leadership
Zaha Hadid‘s success has been highlighted by yet another award. The Iraqi-born, world-renowned architect was honored with the Aenne Burda Award for Creative Leadership yesterday, January 21, at the international DLD (Digital-Life-Design) Conference in Munich. Since 2006, this annual award has honored female digital entrepreneurs for their visionary and successful ideas. Past recipients include The Huffington Post founder Arianna Huffington, former journalist and Wall Street technology analyst Esther Dyson, business magnate Martha Stewart, and more.
As reported by Herald Online, Rhode Island School of Design president John Maeda stated: “Leaders are needed when times are changing, creative leaders change times themselves. They make things – like Zaha. She’s unafraid to disrupt, she’s very optimistic. Today we celebrate her incredible optimism.”
Pharrell to Collaborate with Zaha Hadid
Hip-Hop artist Pharrell is used to collaborating with big names – Jay-Z, Snoop Dogg, and now? Zaha Hadid.
According to an interview with Hypebeast, the artist has decided to continue his dabble into the design world (he’s written a book and designed chairs in the past) by working on a pre-fab home with the Pritzker Prize-winning architect:
Pharrell: “There’s a collaboration I’m working with Zaha Hadid, we’re touring around with the idea of a prefab for a house.
Hypebeast: Is that still at the planning stages or are you guys looking to erect something soon?
Pharell, enigmatically: “Well, we’re going to see something through.”
Via GreatSpaces and Hypebeast
Zaha Hadid Seeing Double in China
Eleven Zaha Hadid projects are currently being constructed in China, however one of them has the international architecture mogul seeing double. Unfortunately, Hadid has found herself in a race to finish the Wangjing SOHO office and retail complex in Beijing before pirates complete their doppelgänger version in Chongqing, a megacity near the eastern edge of the Tibetan plateau.
As reported on Spiegel Online, the Dame claimed that the pirates are currently in the lead and building faster than SOHO. The original, which is set for completion in 2014, features three curved towers whose “shimmering”, metallic skin unifies the complex as each volume appears to “dance” around each other.
Hadid is not the first to be mimicked in China. Last year, a small UNESCO-protected village in Austria, Hallstatt, was recreated, brick for brick, in the subtropical district of Guangdong, China. You can find the complete story here.
Zaha Hadid commissioned to design Miami Skyscraper
The Miami Herald has just announced that Zaha Hadid will be designing her first skyscraper in the Western hemisphere in Miami: America’s Next Great Architectural City. The female powerhouse has been commissioned to transform a waterfront property, currently occupied by a BP Station at 1000 Biscayne Boulevard, predominantly into a residential high rise. The skyscraper will rise above the neighboring Museum Park and fill a void in the wall of towering condos, commonly referred to as the “Biscayne Wall”. Details of the design are expected to be released next year.
This news comes shortly after Zaha’s loss to Norman Foster in an intense competition to design New York City’s next high-profile office tower on 425 Park Avenue. You can watch the A-list architects battle it out here as they present their ideas to the jury.
As we reported last year, Zaha was also selected to design a Miami Beach parking garage at Collins Park, which was approved for construction by the Miami Beach Historic Preservation Board last month.
Check out the preliminary renderings of the Collins Park garage, after the break…
The architect at work: 425 Park Ave
A few months ago we informed you about a competition to re develop the massive “wedding-cake” style building at 425 Park Ave in NY, near Mies’ Seagram Building and SOM’s Lever House. The objective of the developer, L&L Holding, was to turn this project into the next iconic building of the city, and for that they invited a group of eleven renowned practices, including ten Pritzker laureates.
The shortlist was announced in October, and included OMA, Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners, Zaha Hadid Architects and Foster + Partners, which was later announced as the winner of the competition a few weeks ago.
Over the last days, the presentations of the architects to the clients appeared on YouTube, and now we have the opportunity to see these interesting group of architects doing a fundamental part of their work. In the videos we see each architect using their own presentation style, either a PPT, video or just physical boards, connecting it to the practice’s research and discourse, projecting their passion about certain features of their projects and engaging with the client around their main objective: to turn this into an iconic project.
Four videos that take us further into how we understand projects, showing insights that we often don’t have access to, turning the competition into a particular moment of architecture this year.
Zaha Hadid Architects, OMA and Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners presentations after the break:
Video: Zaha Hadid / Galaxy SOHO, Beijing
Last weekend, in the heart of Beijing, the unveiling of the amorphous globes of Zaha Hadid’s Galaxy SOHO stunned visitors with the office and retail complex’s radical aesthetic. Beijing’s rapid economic growth has thrust the cityscape into a continuous battle between ever-climbing modern high rises, and the traditional, winding alleyways, unique to the capital city. Crane.tv meets Hadid to hear about her newest structural feat, and collect the thoughts of the building’s wide-eyed neighbours.
Glamour Magazine names Zaha Hadid as ‘Woman of the Year’
As per usual, Zaha Hadid has been making headlines this week, starting with the release of her newly constructed Galaxy SOHO project in central Beijing and followed by an outpour of recognition within the world of architecture for her 62nd Halloween birthday. Well now, the Dame is making waves in an entirely different territory, as Glamour Magazine has announced Hadid as the “Woman of the Year 2012”.
The magazine centered around fashion, beauty and gossip, has labeled the first female Pritzker Prize laureate as “The Lady Gaga of Architecture”. Glamour praised Hadid’s tenacious demeanor that allowed her to succeed in a “man’s job” and become “one of the most accomplished architects on earth”.
Read Glamour’s complete tribute here.
AD Round Up: Zaha Hadid
In case you hadn’t noticed, today is the birthday of the most influential woman in architecture, Zaha Hadid. So you can’t miss this special Round Up with 9 great projects by the first woman to win the Pritzker Prize. The main image is MAXXI Museum in Rome, where Zaha Hadid intended ‘a new fluid kind of spatiality of multiple perspective points and fragmented geometry, designed to embody the chaotic fluidity of modern life’. Check out, Tondonia Winery Pavilion in La Rioja, Spain or the great London Aquatics Centre for 2012 Summer Olympics. Also in London, ROCA Gallery, a space where the main concept is water erosion. Don’t miss Chamber Music Hall, created for solo performances of Johann Sebastian Bach’s chamber music masterpieces or the amazing Guangzhou Opera House, in China. Like pavilions design? take a look at Chanel Mobile Art Pavilion and Burnham Pavilion in Chicago. Finally, revisit one of our AD Classics: Vitra Fire Station. Happy Birthday Zaha!
Happy Birthday Zaha Hadid!
Zaha Hadid turns 62 today, and the Dame has a lot to celebrate.
Since winning the Pritzker Prize in 2004, the first woman to do so, Hadid’s career has been on an exponential trajectory. Before the prize, Hadid was better known for her extraordinary sketch-paintings of unbuilt works; particularly, her competition-winning entries for “The Peak” in 1982 and the Cardiff Bay Opera House in 1994. Zaha’s “flying” forms were so revolutionary, that some questioned if they could even be made reality – hence why the Opera House was ultimately rejected, for supposed ”uncertainties.” Indeed, before 1994, the only built project she could boast was the complex, deconstructivist Vitra Fire Station.
Of course, it’s Zaha that’s getting the last laugh. Her back-to-back Stirling Prizes for the MAXXI Museum in 2010 and the Evelyn Grace Academy in 2011 are only the tip of the iceberg. In the last three years alone, she’s churned out a bevy of critically-acclaimed projects, including: 2010′s Guangzhou Opera House (a direct descendent of the Cardiff Bay design, according to The Guardian‘s Jonathan Glancey); 2011′s London Aquatics Centre, easily the star of the 2012 Summer Olympics; 2011′s Riverside Museum, winner of the European Museum Academy Micheletti Award 2012; and, just revealed this Monday, 2012′s Galaxy Soho in Beijing.
And there’s much more in the works. The Zaha Hadid Architects website shows 18 projects currently under construction, including the King Abdullah Studies and Research Center (KASRC) in Saudi Arabia and her first project in her native Iraq, the Central Bank.
Donna Karan’s Woman Perfume Bottle / Zaha Hadid
Zaha Hadid, who has been making her mark in product design, such as with her footwear design, has most recently collaborated with Donna Karan to design the powerful new scented perfume. The scent, which evokes the complexity of a woman, is accompanied by a curving, fluid-seeming container made of ombré charcoal glass. With a shape that is distinctively elegant, the bottle represents a strong sense of femininity, while demonstrating the confidence of a woman. “The bottle’s dark, translucent qualities offer a sense of mystery that awakens our curiosity,” Hadid, the Pritzker Prize winner explains. The perfume, which is sure to awaken many, retails at $85, per 1.7 oz.
Venice Biennale 2012: Arum / Zaha Hadid
With their early work inspired by Russian Suprematism, Zaha Hadid Architects’ pays homage to the historical lineages of collective research that has led to the major works of today’s contemporary architecture at the 2012 Venice Biennale with the installation ‘Arum’. The pleated metal structure is derived from the work of German architect Frei Otto, who paved the way for material-structural form-finding processes. This installation is a response to David Chipperfield’s belief that the theme of ‘Common Ground’ is meant to “reassert the existence of an architectural culture, made up not just of singular talents but a rich continuity of diverse ideas united in a common history.”
Beautifully crafted, the installation at the Corderie of the Arsenale also includes models and explorations of ZHA, related to the work of Frei Otto, Felix Candela, Heinz Isler. In this aspect the firm has able to expose visitors to the inspiration and research from modern architects that can be found on ZHA’s contemporary works. We saw Patrik Schumacher before the Biennale’s preview on top of every detail, leading to an impecable result.
Videos, photos and more from the architects after the break:
Venice Biennale 2012: Arum preview / Zaha Hadid Architects
With their early work inspired by Russian Suprematism, Zaha Hadid Architects’ pays homage to the historical lineages of collective research that has led to the major works of today’s contemporary architecture at the 2012 Venice Biennale with the installation ‘Arum’. The pleated metal structure is derived from the work of German architect Frei Otto, who paved the way for material-structural form-finding processes. This installation is a response to David Chipperfield’s belief that the theme of ‘Common Ground’ is meant to “reassert the existence of an architectural culture, made up not just of singular talents but a rich continuity of diverse ideas united in a common history.”
Continue after the break for the architect’s project description.
Zaha’s Aquatics Center wins public approval
After controversy struck when critics blamed “bad design” for inconvenient ticket refunds, the success of Zaha Hadid’s design for the London Olympic’s Aquatics Center was validated by the overwhelming approval from spectators. According to a survey conducted by the University of Westminster, 95% of the Aquatics Center spectators were satisfied with their experience and 85% thought the venue captured the “true spirit” of the Olympics.
Researchers from Westminster and University of South Australia surveyed spectators about their experiences at the Aquatics Centre, Greenwich Park and Wimbledon. Greenwick Park received a 92% approval and Wimbledon received 88%, while 88% of those surveyed believed the events could not have been staged in a better venue.
“Our preliminary analysis suggests positive outcomes for London 2012 organisers. Those attending the events were very satisfied with their experiences and impressed with the venues,” stated Andrew Smith, city tourism lecturer at the University of Westminster. But he added, “We should remember that these results were derived from research undertaken in the positive afterglow of an event.”
Where you at the 2012 London Olympics? Tell us about your experience in the comment section.
via bdonline
Roger Sanchez deconstructs tech house with “Zaha Hadid”
Start your weekend early with this Zaha Hadid-inspired track by the internationally renowned DJ, Roger Sanchez. The former Pratt architecture student is currently working on a starchitect-themed, tech house series that musically interprets the work of his favorite architects, such as Frank Gehry, Frank Lloyd Wright, IM Pei, Tado Ando and Gaudi.
Sanchez explained to bdonline, “The song [Zaha Hadid] – it’s tech-house, futuristic, minimal but with lots of varying elements that are opposing but work together beautifully. It has an angular high at the end which conforms to the form of her designs and there’s a crescendo in the middle that reminds me of her focal points.”
Zaha Hadid denies Aquatics Centre “design flaws”
Although Olympic officials have been forced to offer ticket refunds to seats with obscured views in the London Aquatics Centre, Zaha Hadid Architects denies that this issue is a result of bad design. During last few days, critics have been accusing Zaha’s curvaceous roof as a design blunder that has blocked many of the top rows from viewing the 10m diving board – the highest diving board that will host eight events and Beijing Olympics hero Tom Daley.
As reported on bdonline, a spokesman for Zaha Hadid has insisted this is the result of a ticking issue, as the ticket holders were not informed about the restricted views upon purchase. He stated, “The brief for the building from Locog was to provide 5,000 spectator seats with uninterrupted views of the 10m diving platform events.”
“The centre actually provides over 8,000 seats with uninterrupted views of the 10m platform events. This is more than 3,000 additional seats than the brief required.”
He further explained, “Locog approved the sightline studies and seating layouts over two years ago.”
Continue after the break for more images and a revealing cross section.
Zaha Hadid designs Z Boat for American Art Dealer
First, American art dealer Kenny Schachter commissioned Zaha Hadid to design the futuristic, three wheeled Z-Car in 2005. Now, he has asked the Pritzker Prize winning Dame to create the limited edition Z Boat – an all black, 7.5-meter-long vessel that comfortably seats eight and is powered by an 1×220 HP Mercruiser. Only 12 boats and four prototypes will by built and completed in early 2013 by the French manufacturer Shoreteam.
Continue after the break for more.
Zaha Hadid Speaks out about Austerity
With the economic stability of Europe still uncertain, Dame Hadid has recently spoken out against ideas of austerity, warning the UK government that such a move would lead to poor quality projects for the country’s citizens. Hadid told Kath Viner of The Guardian, ”I think that austerity is used as a cliche because people don’t have ideas, they want to crib (old ones) to do bad stuff. Schools, housing, hospitals – I think the government should invest in good housing.” Hadid went on to explain, “”There needs to be investment. We need some sort of quality. All the privileged can travel, see different worlds, not everyone can. I think it is important for people to have an interesting local nearby. Buildings need to do another job, enlighten people, space enlightens the same way as music art and technology.”
Hadid states that slashing budgets will lead to horrible developments such as the British buildings of the 1960s. While it would be a detriment to cut all project budgets, if a metropolis’ restructuring plan implements stricter budgets in order to more evenly distribute funds for the good of the whole, such a budget can not be ignored. Upon being asked about the cost of her projects, Hadid described her work as “not particularly expensive”; however, her latest Olympic Aquatic Center, which will be in high demand in a few weeks, was originally budgeted for 75 million British pounds and reached more than 250 million by completion date.
While we find Hadid’s words inspiring, we want to know your thoughts on if there can be a balance between implementing measures of austerity while still investing in quality architecture to shape cities and uplift society.
Films & Architecture: “The International”
Not that many films can have the amount of high-end architecture as location for their scenes. In “The International” the characters goes to a secondary position – through architects’ eyes - since the movie is a showroom of well known buildings and cities.
The mythic Guggenheim Museum in New York by Frank Lloyd Wright serves as the space for one of the main scenes, jumping to the Phaeno Science Center by Zaha Hadid in Wolfsburg, Germany. Cities where the movie was filmed include Istanbul, Berlin, Lyon, Milan, and New York, showing us an impressive catalogue of “international” architecture.
Let us know your thoughts about the movie and international architecture. What does this concept mean today? Or was it only an utopian modern movement?
Dame Zaha Hadid
Zaha Hadid has been awarded the title Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) for her services to architecture in the Queen’s building honors announced this weekend.
Dame Zaha Hadid said: “It is a tremendous honor for me to receive this award. I would like to thank all my colleagues and clients for their hard work and support. I am delighted that architecture has been recognized in this way. My father went to the London School of Economics in the 1930s, and everything he learned at the time is why I have always leaned towards the UK.”
Zaha Hadid Architects (ZHA) projects in the UK include Maggie’s Cancer Caring Centre in Kirkcaldy (2006), Evelyn Grace Academy in London (2010), Riverside Museum in Glasgow (2011) and London Aquatics Centre for the 2012 Olympic Games. The MAXXI: Italian National Museum of 21st Century Arts in Rome was awarded the Royal Institute of British Architects’ highest accolade – the Stirling Prize – in 2010. ZHA’s Evelyn Grace Academy won the Stirling Prize in 2011.
