Zaha Hadid Architects: The Latest Architecture and News

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This week London's Science Museum will open The Winton Gallery, a new space dedicated to the study and exploration of mathematics, designed by Zaha Hadid Architects. While this is the practice's first permanent public museum exhibition, it also represents the first UK project to open since the death of its eponymous founder and director.

Inspired by the Handley Page aircraft, the design of the space was conceived through observing equations of airflow used in the aviation industry. The layout and lines of the gallery therefore represents the movement of air that would have flowed around this historic aircraft in flight – a metaphor which extends from the positioning of the showcases and benches to the three-dimensional curved surfaces of the central pod structure.

The designs of the Zaha Hadid-created statuettes to be handed out at this year’s BRIT Awards have been unveiled. One of Hadid’s final commissions before her death this March, the design consists of a family of 5 interrelated trophies take the form of abstracted female figures representing diversity. One of those family members, meant to represent Britannia, the female personification of Great Britain, will be awarded to musicians for their victories in the BRIT Awards ceremony this February.

On Thursday 17th of November, at the World Architecture Festival in Berlin, Patrik Schumacher gave a lecture offering his theory on how to address London’s Housing crisis. Given Schumacher’s well-known penchant for neoliberal economics, it was perhaps little surprise that his plan included a number of highly controversial ideas, such as the elimination of all forms of social housing and planning, and the privatization of all public space—with Schumacher highlighting Hyde Park as a particularly interesting opportunity.

Though ArchDaily was in attendance at the lecture, we chose not to cover Schumacher’s speech, at least in part because the audible boos from the crowd indicated that this was not a position that the wider architectural profession was interested in giving publicity to. However, the news was picked up by a number of other architectural publications including Dezeen; as a result, Schumacher’s speech became front page news on the London Evening Standard, prompting a response from London Mayor Sadiq Khan who said Schumacher’s ideas were “out of touch” and “just plain wrong.” These developments in turn have prompted an outcry from the architectural profession, causing Zaha Hadid Architects to write an open letter in response to the furore. Read on to see the full letter.

Update [05 January 2017]: the Architects' Journal have published a leaked internal email from Patrik Schumacher which claims that "this letter was sent out by ZHA’s head of press, Roger Howie, without the authorisation of any of the company’s directors."

The Government of the United Kingdom and competition organizer Malcolm Reading Consultants have announced the ten architect teams selected to envision designs for the new National Memorial to the Holocaust, to be located next to the UK Parliament. Designs will encompass a “striking” new National Memorial in Victoria Gardens, as well as a possible below ground Learning Center.

The 10 shortlisted teams were selected from nearly 100 entries from teams across the globe by a jury made up of notable figures in British culture, religion and architecture, including Director of Stanton Williams Architects, Paul Williams; former Serpentine Galleries Director Dame Julia Peyton-Jones; and National September 11 Memorial and Museum Director, Alice M Greenwald.

Zaha Hadid Architects has unveiled the design of the Guangzhou Infinitus Plaza in Baiyun New Town, Guangzhou, China, coinciding with the project’s groundbreaking ceremony. The 167,000 square meter complex will consist of two building footprints, connected in the air through twin green-roofed skybridges to create a vertical campus for LKK Health Products Group (LKKHPG) and the Infinitus health products brand.

Employing ZHA’s trademark flowing forms, the building design follows the concept of the infinite, arranged as a series of endless rings that enhance connectivity and following the form of the symbol for infinity “∞”.

Dubai Design District (d3) has announced the opening of offices by 4 of the world’s leading architecture firms – Zaha Hadid Architects, Santiago Calatrava Architects & Engineers, Foster + Partners and Benoy – marking another step towards the city’s goal of becoming a global design hub.

Since first launching in April 2013, d3 has become the region’s preeminent destination for artists, designers and creative types of all kinds to work and collaborate. So far, d3 has welcomed in over 30 architecture firms of medium to large size, including SSH and Viktor Udzenija, RMJM and Wanders Wagner.

Architectural photographer Marc Goodwin has recently shot the second collection of his "ultra-marathon of photoshoots" – in London. Following his unique insight into the spaces occupied by Nordic architectural offices (based in Oslo, Stockholm, Copenhagen and Helsinki), Goodwin has turned his lens to a broad collection of practices in the British capital, captured in just seven days. From Zaha Hadid Architects' former school to Foster + Partner's monumental studios on the banks of the River Thames, here are a series of surprising places that architectural offices call home.

Zaha Hadid Architects has been announced as the winner of an international competition to design a new football stadium for the Forest Green Rovers in Stroud, UK. Following a seven month competition featuring over 50 entries from around the world, ZHA was selected over finalist Glenn Howells Architects for their all-wood proposal. When finished, the stadium will be the first in the world to be built entirely out of wood.

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The BRIT Awards has announced that the statuettes that will be given during their 2017 awards ceremony have been designed by the late Zaha Hadid.

Hadid had accepted the project in January of this year and developed concepts for the design before her sudden passing in March of this year. The work has since been led by Zaha Hadid Design Director Maha Kutay and the BRIT Awards Niamh Byrne.

“Zaha was truly excited to be doing this,” recalled Kutay. “Her vision was, being an architect, to focus our efforts more on the 3D element, as the statue had previously been used as a canvas for artists to paint on for the last few years. Our design expresses Zaha’s unwavering belief in progress and optimism for the future and a break from the norm.  The biggest challenge was to create something different within certain guidelines, yet achieving a result recognisable to the public. You have to respect the existing to create something new.”

The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) has announced the shortlist of six finalist projects in the running for the inaugural RIBA International Prize. The first RIBA Award open to any qualified architect in the world, the International Prize seeks to name the world’s “most significant and inspirational” building. Criteria for consideration include the demonstration of “visionary, innovative thinking and excellence of execution, whilst making a distinct contribution to its users and to its physical context.”

The six finalists were named from a longlist of 30 buildings, from which a further selection of 21 projects have been recognized by the jury for the RIBA Award for International Excellence. The jury has also named the winner of the RIBA International Emerging Architect prize recognizing “the achievement of architects in the earlier stages of their career who are working on global projects.”

The Grand Jury is lead by Richard Rogers and includes Billie Tsien, Kunlé Adeyemi, Philip Gumuchdjian, and Marilyn Jordan Taylor.

"Our panel of jurors have been particularly impressed by the way in which each building reacts to, resolves and assimilates into the varying geographies and contexts - from dense urban cities to a small town in the Arctic Circle," said RIBA President Jane Duncan on the naming of the finalists. "Each project resolves the complex demands of its context with ingenuity, exceptional detail and finishing and a sensitivity to the needs of the users and communities which will inhabit these spaces."

Zaha Hadid Architects has won a competition for the design of the Urban Heritage Museum Administration Centre in Diriyah, Saudi Arabia. The center will serve as the head office of the Heritage Museum, an educational institution established to preserve the historic UNESCO world heritage sites of Diriyah and the surrounding Wadi Hanifah valley.

Maksim Sodomovsky of iVision3D has created a virtual tour of the Dominion Office Building, designed by Zaha Hadid Architects, in Moscow, Russia. Completed in 2015, the project is among the new infrastructure being built to support the growing creative and IT industries in the southeast of the city. The design is organized as a series of stacked plates, connected with curving elements and surrounding a central atrium exposed to natural light.

Check out the virtual tour here:

Photographer Khoo Guo Jie of Béton Brut has provided us with some new images of Zaha Hadid Architects’ Nanjing International Youth Culture Centre, now nearing completion along the Yangtze river in Hexi New Town, Nanjing’s new central business district.

Occupying a 5.2 hectare site, the complex contains 465,000 square meters of floor space, which includes a hotel, conference center, offices and underground parking, and is part of a larger masterplan by ZHA that will feature a pedestrian bridge linking the plaza with the other side of the river.

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Opening to much fanfare earlier this week, Zaha Hadid Architects' Port House holds a commanding presence over the port of Antwerp. The design combines a listed and formerly derelict fire station, which was restored as part of the project, with an eye-catching glass extension which rises out of the older building's courtyard and thrusts itself towards the water in a dramatic cantilever. In the context of the port, where large infrastructure and colossal machines form the backdrop to everyday functions, the building boldly stakes its claim as the operational centerpiece, providing a space for the Port of Antwerp's 500 employees. Photographer Thomas Mayer visited the building, capturing its striking external presence and investigating how its structural gymnastics translate to the building's internal space.

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Weston Williamson + Partners has won an international competition for a 125,000 square meter “Science City” along the western edge of Cairo, Egypt, beating out entries from Ngiom Partnership and Zaha Hadid Architects. The project will be built from the ground up in the desert surrounding the city, and will serve as a 21st century science museum and new national institute for scientific innovation. The competition called for an integrated master plan and conceptual design that express “a particular vision of the quest for knowledge and the pursuit of science.”

The jury selected the winning design for its overall comprehensiveness and identity, as well as its ability to be intelligently constructed in phases.

“This project was the one that best responded to the challenges of the brief. The design is subtle but rich. It involves various levels of planning,” said the jury in a statement. “It displays a blending of aspects of several of the “types” that were so visible: the circle, the striation, the berm (or dune), the legible apparatus of sustainable performance, the complex of courtyards, the oasis, etc. But the overall impact is one of a unified composition of great elegance and finesse.”

Continue reading for more on Weston Williamson’s design and to see images from all of the winning entries.

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.