Browsing: Zaha Hadid

© Iwan Baan

Architect: Zaha Hadid Architects
Location: Rome, Flaminio, Italy
Client: Ministero Beni e Attività Culturali – Fondazione MAXXI
Structural engineers: Anthony Hunts Associates OK Design Group
Lights and illumination: Equation Lighting
Year of enchargement: 1999
Year of completion: 2009
Constructed area: 27,000 sqm
Photographs: Iwan Baan

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The 160m long wave shaped roof frame for Zaha Hadid’s Aquatic Center has just been lifted and lowered into place, marking one of the most complex engineering and construction challenges of the Olympic Park for the London 2012 games.   Weighing in at over 3,000 tons, the gigantic steel trusses rest on a mere three concrete supports to provide open space for the facility’s large racing and diving pools.  The roof is also designed to stretch, twist and contract in response to the effects of snow, wind and changing temperatures.

More about the construction and a video to follow. read more »

Images courtesy of Zaha Hadid Architects © Michelle Litvin

The figure of Daniel Burnham has been very important for the city of Chicago as we currently know it,  as he was one of the authors of the Plan of Chicago, also known as the Burnham Plan,  which reshaped Chicago’s central area starting in 1909.  To celebrate the centennial of this plan several events have been held during this year, such as the Union Station 2020 competition and the Burnham Memorial competition. Also, two pavilions by UN Studio and Zaha Hadid have been temporally  installed at the Millenium Park (read our previous article about this), hosting multimedia exhibits on the future of Chicago. The pavilions will be opened to the public until Oct 31st, 2009.

Zaha Hadid Architects´s pavilion merges new formal concepts with the memory of Burnham’s bold, historic urban planning. Superimpositions of spatial structures with hidden traces of Burnham’s Plan are overlaid and inscribed within the structure to create a dynamic form.

Read Zaha´s statement on the design after the break:

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Bert from Moving Cities (a blog  focused on contemporary architecture in China)  just told us about a new project by Zaha Hadid in Beijing: Chaoyangmen Soho.

The announcement was made by Pan Shiyi, a real estate mogul  chairman of SOHO China. Pan has been working on huge developments, such as the Commune by the Great Wall and several commercial projects in central Beijing.

What’s interesting on SOHO’s developments, is that they invite renowned architects to participate, under heavy budgets restrictions in order to delivery quality projects for the “stylish middle class”.  They also have a great corporative culture as you can see on their website.

But back to this project, Bert points us out to a recent interview with Pan Shiyi:

Q: Which development project is your favourite?
A: Chaoyangmen SOHO. It is our latest development. I asked British architect Zaha Hadid to design a creative project, and she did. The project is unique, like the Beijing bird´s nest [Beijing National Stadium].

Read more about this project at Pan Shiyi’s blog. More images after the break.

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Today at 11.00 AM took place the laying of the foundation stone of what will be the new iconic building in the area of Barcelona’s Forum, the Spiral Tower. This university campus will be located at the end of Avenida Diagonal, one of the main avenues of Barcelona, beside the Forum building designed by Herzog & de Meuron for the Forum of Cultures held in 2004.

Zaha Hadid came around 11:15 and the event had an intense political presence (the Mayor of Barcelona Jordi Hereu, mayors from areas like Maresme and Besós and key representatives of the Consorsi). The building, located at the confluence of streets Taulat and Sant Ramon de Penyafort, will have a ground surface of 20,650 sqm.

Hadid’s speech was short, she recalled his first trip to Spain when she was 7 years and then she talked about a competition in which she participated 20 years ago, related to the design and extension of the Diagonal Avenue. At that moment she had the opportunity for a better understanding about the urban development of Barcelona and [as she said there] it has been a big influence on the design of the Spiral Tower.

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Luke Hayes

We just received Zaha Hadid Architects’ latest project for the Manchester International Festival.  ZHA has created a chamber music hall for solo performances of Johann Sebastian Bach’s chamber music masterpieces. The project’s form, a suspended ribbon of translucent lightweight synthetic fabric (150 g/m2) articulated by an internal steel structure, translates the intricate relationships of  Bach’s harmonies into an architectural spatial condition. Festival Director Alex Poots exclaimed, “Zaha Hadid Architects consistently come up with challenging and innovative ideas. It has been wonderful to see the realisation of this project and experience such intimate performances from the leading concert musicians within it.”

Further description about ZHA’s Music Hall and more images after the break. read more »

UNStudio's Pavilion

Zaha Hadid's Pavilion

We introduced the Burnham Plan Pavilions designed by Zaha Hadid and UNStudio a few months ago, and now, both are almost ready to be opened to the public.  Continuing Millenium Park’s tradition of displaying dynamic public art, the pavilions emphasize bettering the future, which echo the ideals of the 1909 Burnham Plan.  Although opening day was June 19th, only UNStudio’s pavilion was complete, as Hadid’s pavilion will require a few more weeks until it will be opened to the public due to its geometric complexities.

More about each pavilion after the break. read more »

We were just informed that Zaha Hadid Architects will be designing the Cairo Expo City, together with multi-disciplinary engineering consultancy Buro Happold, after a two phase competition.

This project follows the recently announced Stone Towers by ZHA in Cairo, Egypt.

The new Cairo Expo City will provide a facilities suitable for the international conference and exhibition industry, making Cairo more competitive in a global scale.

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Zaha Hadid announced her latest design, the Stone Towers, for the expanding district of Cairo, Egypt.  Within the 525,000sqm towers, Hadid’s design provides office and retail spaces, a five-star business hotel with serviced apartments, and sunken landscaped gardens and plaza called the Delta.

Further project description after the break. read more »

Zaha Hadid Architects and french company Lacoste collaborated to design this exclusive footwear. Limited to 850 pairs, the boots will be released next July in three exclusive stores from Paris, London and Milan.

“Featuring a digitized version of Lacoste’s famous croc logo and a pliable, coiled strap system, the styles bring Hadid’s signature look to footwear for men (an ankle boot) and women (a calf boot).”

One more image after the break. read more »

Rafael López de Heredia Tondonia Winery is one of the oldest and more famous winery in the Spanish region of La Rioja. To celebrate their 125th anniversary they decided to rehabilitate a very old store that the winery founder took to Brussel’s World Fair in 1910 and had been disassembled ever since.

In 2002 current owners (direct descendants of the founder), discovered how beautiful the old store was and decided to built an exterior volume to house the old store. This would become the future wine store and a place where visitors could taste the great wines they produce. This pavillion is only part of all the project that will include three more tasting rooms and a cleaning room. More images and architect’s description after the break. read more »

Our friends from Minimalismi shared with us this info. This October, Zaha Hadid will exhibit her best works in an exhibition at the Salone of the Palazzo della Ragione in the Italian city of Padova.

The Palazzo has presented itself as a vigorous design challenge for Zaha Hadid due to the historical quality of the space. The aim has been both to respect the spatial / contextual characteristics and to intervene in the space at the same time. The undulating blocks, whose forms are defined by the rules of breaking and continuity, generate 6 distinct islands within themselves. Each of these islands define the Conceptual Morphologies of the ZHA exhibition concept, namely: (1) Lines/Bundles/Networks, (2) Waves/Shells/Cocoons, (3) Aggregations/Clusters/Jigsaws, (4) Fields, (5)Landscape & Topography, and (6) Parametricism.

More images after the break. read more »

French architect Dominique Perrault has been selected to design the new city center of Bulgaria’s capital Sofia. The city center will be built in the next ten years and will house various state institutions. The center will be located along Sofia’s main boulevard “Tsarigradsko Shosse”. The vision of Bulgarian prime minister Sergei Stanishev and his brother – architect Georgii Stanishev – is to gather ministries and state agencies in the new “Sofia city”, relocated from the current center of Sofia.

Perrault was selected among six practices, all of them world architectural design leaders including Zaha Hadid, Norman Foster, and Massimiliano Fuksas. Two Bulgarian firms also participated in the final stages of the contest.

Seen at Bustler. More images of Perrault, Foster and Hadid’s proposals after the break.

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Zaha Hadid has been awarded on several ocations, including the Pritzker Prize, becoming the first woman to win the prize. So to start this week of Round Up, we bring you previously featured projects of Zaha Hadid (and an interview).

Zaha Hadid´s project rejected due to heat
Zaha Hadid´s extension proposal for the Middle East Centre in St Antony´s College in Oxford has been denied approval by the the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment (CABE). The comission wrote in their report “it appears unfortunate to position the archive and reading room behind the large south facing window; we wonder whether full sunlight and overheating could potentially compromise the usability of this space” (read more…)

Regium Waterfront Project by Zaha Hadid
Zaha Hadid is working on her latest project in Italy, in the Mediterranean city of Reggio Calabria. The project includes a museum and a performing arts centre on a sea strait that separates continental Italy from the island of Sicily. The centre will be visible from the Sicilian coast. See the latest images revealed by Zaha Hadid Architects, here (read more…)

Dorobanti Tower, Bucharest / Zaha Hadid Architects
Dorobanti tower, a new project by Zaha Hadid Architects in Bucharest moves away from the works we have been seen lately, with a very expressive structure. The 200m tall iconic tower will be located in the heart of the capital city of Romania, at junction of Calea Dorobanti and St. Mihail Eminescu, with over 100,000 sqm for mixed-use development which include a 5-star hotel (with restaurants and convention centre), luxury apartments and retail space at street level (read more…)

Designs for Burnham Plan Centennial by Zaha Hadid and Ben Van Berkel
The architects’ rendering of the two recyclable pavilions were released by the Alderman, the Burnham Committee, the City of Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs, the Art Institute of Chicago and Friends of Downtown. Both pavilions-one designed by London-based Zaha Hadid and the other by Amsterdam-based Ben van Berkel of UNStudio-emphasize the importance of boldly imagining a better future for all, as Daniel Burnham and Edward Bennett did in 1909 in their Plan of Chicago (read more…)

Zaha Hadid Interview
The Guardian just feautured an interview with Zaha Hadid. She talks about the aquatics centre for the 2012 Olympics, rebuilding Baghdad and the usual controversy she creates. “Your work is quite divisive. Do you set out to cause controversy? No. But because it’s not familiar at the beginning, people shy away from it.” Read the complete interview, here.

A group of ten architects, including Norman Foster, Zaha Hadid, and Frank Gehry, signed a letter criticizing Prince Charles for talking against the construccion of luxury houses in Chelsea Barracks, London.

Prince Charles is against the modern design with glass and steel used by architects in the Chelsea district, and wants them to use a more traditional design using stones and bricks. The Sunday Times also said that Prince Charles showed his concern to Qatar’s royal family, owner of the site.

The design was developed by Richard Rogers, member of the House of Lords and known for projects like Heathrow’s Terminal 5, the Millenium Dome in London and the European Court of Human Rights. Rogers, with the other ten architects, accused Prince Charles of taking advantage of his royalty position to attack the architectural plans of the site.

This isn’t the first time that Prince Charles enters the architectural debate, strong supporter of Leon Krier’s New Urbanism.

Full text of the public letter to Prince Charles:

THE Prince of Wales’s intervention over the design of the former Chelsea Barracks site deserves more reasoned comment. It is essential in a modern democracy that private comments and behind-the-scenes lobbying by the prince should not be used to skew the course of an open and democratic planning process that is under way.

Proposals by Richard Rogers’s practice for the developers Qatari Diar were recently submitted for planning to Westminster city council. The scheme has been adapted and changed in response to comments from Westminster’s planning officers and extensive local consultation. Statutory bodies such as the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment and the Greater London Authority have also been consulted. Westminster’s planning committee will meet and shortly deliver its verdict.

Its members should be left alone to decide whether the Rogers’s scheme is a fitting 21st-century addition to the fabric of London. The developers have chosen carefully in selecting the best architect for the sensitive project. Rogers and his team have played their part in engaging with the democratic process. The prince and his advisers should do the same. The process should be allowed to take its course; otherwise we risk condemning this critical site to years as an urban blight.

If the prince wants to comment on the design of this or any other project, we urge him to do so through the established planning consultation process. Rather than use his privileged position to intervene in one of the most significant residential projects likely to be built in London in the next five years, he should engage in an open and transparent debate.

Lord Foster, Foster and Partners, London, Pritzker Prize 1999
Zaha Hadid, Zaha Hadid Architects, London, Pritzker Prize 2004
Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron, Pritzker Prize 2001
Jean Nouvel, Jean Nouvel Architectes, Paris, Pritzker Prize 2008
Renzo Piano, Renzo Piano Building Workshop, Genoa, Pritzker Prize 1998
Frank Gehry, Gehry Partners, Los Angeles, Pritzker Prize 1989
Sir Nicholas Serota, Commissioner, CABE 1999-2006
Richard Burdett, London School of Economics
David Adjaye, Adjaye Associates, London
Deyan Sudjic, Director, Design Museum, London

Alderman Brendan Reilly and the Burnham Plan Centennial Committee today unveiled designs for two temporary pavilions that will be installed this June in Millennium Park, symbolizing the forward-looking agenda of the 220 organizations commemorating this year’s 100th anniversary of the Plan of Chicago.

The architects’ rendering of the two recyclable pavilions were released by the Alderman, the Burnham Committee, the City of Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs, the Art Institute of Chicago and Friends of Downtown. The pavilions will be open from June 19 through October 31 on the South Chase Promenade of Millennium Park.

Both pavilions-one designed by London-based Zaha Hadid and the other by Amsterdam-based Ben van Berkel of UNStudio-emphasize the importance of boldly imagining a better future for all, as Daniel Burnham and Edward Bennett did in 1909 in their Plan of Chicago.

Seen at Bustler. More images after the break. read more »

The Guardian just feautured an interiview with Zaha Hadid. She talks about the aquatics centre for the 2012 Olympics, rebuilding Baghdad and the usual controversy she creates.

Your work is quite divisive. Do you set out to cause controversy?

No. But because it’s not familiar at the beginning, people shy away from it.

Read the complete interview, here.

Dorobanti tower, a new project  by Zaha Hadid Architects in Bucharest moves away from the works we  have been seen lately, with a very expressive structure. The 200m tall iconic tower will be located in the heart of the capital city of  Romania, at junction of Calea Dorobanti and St. Mihail Eminescu, with over 100,000 sqm for mixed-use development which include a 5-star hotel (with restaurants and convention centre), luxury apartments and retail space at street level.

The chamfered diamond like structure  tapers from the centre towards the top and the bottom. The meandering structural mesh expresses the change of programs across the tower.

A good move by Zaha in my opinion.

More on the structure, from Zaha Hadid Architects:

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Zaha Hadid is working on her latest project in Italy, in the Mediterranean city of Reggio Calabria. The project includes a museum and a performing arts centre on a sea strait that separates continental Italy from the island of Sicily. The centre will be visible from the Sicilian coast.

See the latest images revealed by Zaha Hadid Architects, here.

Austria’s Federal Minister of Science and Research Johannes Hahn, City Councillor Rudolf Schicker (Department for Urban Development and Traffic) together with Vienna University and Budesimmobiliengesellschaft (BIG), have just announced the winning projects that will build the new campus of the Vienna University of Economics and Business.

The following projects were selected:

Zaha Hadid Architects – Zaha Hadid, Germany Library & Learning Center (LLC)
Hitoshi Abe Studio – Hitoshi Abe; Japan Department Building (O2)
Estudio Carme Pinos – Carme Pinos, Spain Department Building (W1)
NO.MAD Arquitectos – Eduardo Arroyo, Spain Executive Academy (W1-EA)
CRABstudio Architects – Peter Cook, England Department Building (W2)