Zaha Hadid: The Latest Architecture and News

This video, presented by the BBC, takes a look at the work of Zaha Hadid as inspired by her favorite artist: the Russian Suprematist painter Kazimir Malevich. Featuring interviews with the dame herself, the narrative looks all the way back to Hadid’s origins, including her time at the Architectural Association School in London. It was there that she designed “Malevich’s Tektonik,” a hotel along the Thames River based upon the works of Malevich. Hadid believed that this work radically drove the architectural outlook she would employ for the remainder of her career:

“I was very fascinated by abstraction and how it really could lead to abstracting plans, moving away from certain dogmas about what architecture is. That project really liberated me, freed me from all these rules.”

Check out the video, currently on display as part of the Zaha Hadid retrospective at the Venice Biennale, for more on how Hadid drew inspiration from the Russian artist.

Videos

Lilas, Zaha Hadid Architects’ design for the 2007 Serpentine Gallery pavilion, has been reinstalled at a new location on the south lawn of Chatsworth House, the Derbyshire home of the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire. The mushroom-like pavilion has been put on display as part of Sotheby’s annual Beyond Limits sculpture exhibition, and is for sale through the international auction house.

Zaha Hadid Architects’ (ZHA) 170-meter-tall Generali Tower has topped out at 44 stories in Milan, Italy. The Generali Tower, along with two other towers, forms the centerpiece for the CityLife masterplan to revitalize the old site of Milan’s International Fair, which closed in 2005.

Through the redevelopment, which began in 2004, the site will be open “to year-round public use, with the inclusion of new civic spaces, public parks, and residential buildings, in addition to shopping areas and corporate offices, all with direct transport connections via the Tre Torri station on the line 5 of the city’s metro system.”

Zaha Hadid’s exhibition design for Kurt Schwitters: Merz opened to the public earlier this week at Galerie Gmurzynska in Zurich. In an article about the exhibition in T Magazine, senior designer and director at Zaha Hadid Architects (ZHA), Patrik Schumacher said, “It’s literally the last project of Zaha, finished by her team.”

The exhibition, presenting seventy works – in all media – from each period of the artist’s career, honors five decades of the gallery showing Schwitter’s work. Hadid’s design is a reflection on the artist’s well-known, but destroyed, Merzbau, a sculpture that filled the artist’s workspace from 1923-1937. According to the Hadid’s office, “[Merzbau was] a living, inhabited collage, ever-shifting and expanding, and this was the starting point for [Zaha’s] exhibition design which pushes beyond mere random collage to embrace the unpredictable richness and the complex variegated order found in nature.” The design builds on an established relationship between Hadid and Galerie Gmurzynska; Merz following in the footsteps of an earlier exhibition space designed for another of the architect’s inspirations, Kasimir Malevich.

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The Moinian Group announced that they had been collaborating with the late Zaha Hadid to develop a “visionary” new project for New York City. The project, at 220 Eleventh Avenue in West Chelsea, is a multi-residential apartment building with a cultural institution at street level.

This announcement comes after Zaha Hadid Architects pledged to complete all 36 projects that were in construction or design development at the time of her death, as her office continues her powerful legacy.

The visual identity of West Hollywood’s Sunset Strip has been synonymous with billboard advertising since the 1960s. Over time, different eras have been displayed through the advertising; from the rock bands and cigarette brands of the 60s and 70s, to the highly commercialised signage of today. As part of an initiative to probe the value of this signage as both an identifier and a valuable public asset, The City of West Hollywood (WeHo) launched The Sunset Strip Spectacular Pilot Creative Off-Site Advertising Sign Competition.

The competition sought a multi-dimensional, kinetic billboard “spectacular,” and attracted firms from advertising, marketing, design, architecture and engineering backgrounds. A pool of nine entrants has been narrowed down to four finalists: JCDecaux/Zaha Hadid Project Management Limited; Orange Barrel Media/Tom Wiscombe Architecture/MoC; Outfront Media/Gensler/MAK; and TAIT Towers Inc. Following public presentations in May, the proposals are now visible to the public before the jury make their recommendation later this month.

In celebration of the four decade career of the late Zaha Hadid, Fondazione Berengo will host an exhibition of her paintings, drawings, and models at the 16th century Palazzo Franchetti in Venice, coinciding with the 2016 Venice Biennale. The exhibition will display the full range of Hadid's design work from built projects, to those under construction, and others ultimately never realized. Some of the early, unrealized work that will be represented includes Malevich’s Tektonic, a bridge concept for the Thames River, which Hadid developed while she was still a student at the Architectural Association School in London (1976-77), as well Peak Club, Hong Kong (1982-83), Hafenstrasse, Hamburg (1989), Grand Buildings, Trafalgar Square, London (1985), the Victoria City master-plan for Berlin (1988), and the Cardiff Bay Opera House (1994-95).

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Zaha Hadid Architects has 36 projects underway in 21 countries, and four of them will be completed this year. The Salerno Maritime Terminal will open later this month, the Port House, Antwerp, in September, the King Abdullah Petroleum Studies and Research Center (KAPSARC) in Riyadh, in October, and the Mathematics Gallery at the Science Museum in London, in December.

In spite of the untimely death of the practice’s namesake last month, the firm has pledged to continue with its slate of projects, stating, “Zaha is in the DNA of Zaha Hadid Architects. She continues to drive and inspire us every day, and we work on as Zaha taught us – with curiosity, integrity, passion and determination.”

Following the death of Zaha Hadid on March 31st of this year Section D, Monocle 24's weekly review of design, architecture and craft, hones in on the role of women in architecture and design. They discuss why, despite an almost 50:50 gender split in undergraduate architecture courses, women are still grossly underrepresented at senior levels within the profession by featuring conversations with two leading female architects, Angela Brady OBE and Amanda Levete. The episode also looks back over the lives of some of architecture's overlooked heroines.

Since Zaha Hadid’s death two weeks ago, we’ve been thinking a lot about her legacy. Hadid’s accomplishments in architecture are impressive not only because of her innovative designs, but because she succeeded in a male-dominated profession, and undoubtedly experienced sexism along the way. In our webcomic, Architexts, we use humor to cope with various aspects and stereotypes of the architectural profession, including negative ones. With our forthcoming book, Architects, LOL, we hope to share the stories--your stories--that paint a more realistic picture of the profession, rather than an idealistic one that most of us can only dream of.

The Iraqi-born British Architect Dame Zaha Hadid, DBE (1950-2016) has died aged 65, in Miami, Florida. According to reports from the BBC, Hadid was being treated in hospital for bronchitis when she suffered a heart attack. Earlier this year she became the first sole woman to receive the RIBA Royal Gold Medal at a ceremony in London.

Read on for the official statement from Zaha Hadid Architects:

Zaha Hadid, who was named as the the first sole woman to be awarded the UK's highest honour for architects in her own right in 2015, received the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) 2016 Royal Gold Medal at a ceremony in London yesterday. Hadid, who was appointed a Dame of the British Empire in 2012, received the Pritzker Prize in 2004. Her practice also took both the 2010 and 2011 RIBA Stirling Prizes.

Following the recent trend of luxury pre-fabricated structures like Muji’s recent three huts, Robbie Antonio’s “Revolution Pre-Crafted” is a collection of pre-fabricated pavilions by 30 top designers and architects, including Zaha Hadid, Sou Fujimoto, Daniel Libeskind and Gluckman Tang. Some have already been built, being exhibited at Design Miami, while others are planned for the future.

With recent advancements in building technology, Revolution Pre-Crafted hopes to democratize the design of pre-fab structures, offering a line of products that incorporate the distinct spatial and social brands of the designers. See a selection of the Revolution Precraft line after the break.