In an article for London's Royal Academy of Arts Magazine entitled Plane Sailing, Zaha Hadid discusses the influence of Russian Suprematist painter Kazimir Malevich on her own design work. In Hadid's early work, such as The Peak Blue Slabs (1982/83), the visual connections to Malevich's strict, regular shapes and lines are evident.
Whereas Hadid "found the traditional system of architectural drawing to be limiting, [...] studying Malevich allowed [her] to develop abstraction as an investigative principle." This approach led to her developing "a form of reverse archaeology" which led to built projects such as the Vitra Fire Station in Germany. Read about her influences in full and her thoughts on the future for architectural drafting here.
A retrospective of Malevich's work has recently opened at London's Tate Modern (until the 26th October 2014).
