In the latest installation of NOWNESS’In Residence series, British architect Ian Simpson describes how was told by his careers teacher “not to set [his] sights too high” when he decided that he wanted to become an Architect. Here, he discusses the design intentions behind his home – the tallest residence in the United Kingdom’s second city: Manchester. For Simpson, “home is [only] forty seconds away by lift.”
In 1996 the largest bomb in mainland Britain that the IRA ever exploded was five hundred yards from here. […] The bomb allowed us to create physical and visual permeability to the North.
At the end of 2014, in collaboration with contractor Somass, lab03 won the competition for a new visitor centre next to the historical castle Assumburg in Heemskerk (The Netherlands). The new centre became necessary following the reconstruction of the historical castle garden and the subsequent increase in the number of visitors. The building accommodates a general reception area, an office for the volunteers and a workshop. Construction was completed at the end of 2015.
The design restores the symmetry of the forecourt by positioning the building on the remains of the former stables. In this way, the central axis of the forecourt is again flanked by two functioning service buildings: The Orangery and the new visitor centre. In time, the openings in the historical wall will be opened again and the visitor centre will then be optimally connected to the forecourt.
Elevation
By the positioning, the chosen outline and use of material, the building blends into the environment in a natural way. The new volume is set back from the existing monumental wall. By extending the roof over the existing wall an extra covered outdoor space is created. The new building adds a new layer with respect for the history of the site.
The entire public programme is located on the ground floor. By separating the reception area and the office spaces, both spaces can be used independently. The workshop is accessible from both the inside and from the outside. Above the workshop, in the attic, there is a space for the storage of fruit and vegetables from the garden.
Floor Plan
Handcrafted buildings and modern installation techniques are well-suited to one another: the larch timber used in the construction was sawn in the wind-powered sawmill ‘t Jonge Schaap, nearby at the Zaanse Schans. The visitor centre is heated by a heat pump. As a result, making a gas connection unnecessary. When the solar panels are connected the building will be neutral in its use of energy. The old glass roof tiles provide extra light for the outdoor space.They light the space in a mysterious way, matching the atmosphere of the ancient castle.
From the architect. The building of “Dilijan Central School” is located in the city of Dilijan.
In recent years the education sphere in Dilijan is under development, which is evidenced by the creation of Dilijan International School and Scientific Research Center of Central Bank of Armenia.
Big volumes and large spaces were required based on the function of school building; at the same time the goal of the concept of the project was to try to reproduce the Caucasian environment typical to the city of Dilijan.
Diagram
The classrooms were handled as lodges by the volume composition and which resemble Dilijan streets in interior and exterior.
The land area is about 20.000 square meters, with two flattened platform on South slope, which has a difference of 5 meters level towards each other. The Client Central Bank of Armenia and the Exploiter “Ayb” Educational Foundation prepared an assignment jointly, where Storaket Architectural Studio was requested to design a classroom for each class from first to ninth graders from the whole required buildings, except for the sport’s core.
Section 1-1
In view of the design assignment, the geological peculiarities and the landscape requirements, the plan layout design of the building was formed with four wings, which are united through central corridor, which is approximately 4,200 square meters.
The main entrance is designed for primary entrance and exit of students, which is located in the Southern part, in the center of the building at the end of main corridor. Entering the building via main stairs you go upstairs, the second floor of corridor, which divides the flow into 4 directions. The four directions are:
Southern-western wing: consists of 4 classrooms and teachers’ room
Southern-eastern wing: consists of 5 classrooms and teachers’ room
Northern-western wing: consists of dining hall, administrative part and library
Northern-western wing: consists of arts classroom and hall. All the workshops are located on the basement levels of eastern wings.
Collaborators: K. Kozlov, G. Suzdalev and Y.Tichonenko
Area: 475.0 sqm
From the architect. The Guest&Bath House is located on the natural meadow in forest right on the hill above the pond. The site relief has a pronounced slope to the north pond area. It is surrounded by wild nature. Different kind of trees: birches, pines and fir-trees. Herbs, plants and grass field. There is a little strawberry field close to the terrace. It is the place full of sounds and smells in the summer, full of peace and quiet in winter.
The house is coupled with the nature surroundings. No to fill the border between outside and inner space. To let the house leave as a part of the nature. It has to be one organism so the inner part is formed by the whole construction of the building. No imitations or decorations. It was decided to make it totally wooden but with the big glass openings. The black color for exterior and interior was chosen as the most abstract and indifferent color.
The wooden construction is based on the together work of big and long wooden beams and height narrow wooden pillars. The uniform rhythm of the wooden supports forms the whole structure and works on the main spirit of the house repeating the rhythm of tree trunks.
All inside walls are wooden framework covered with plywood.
All the static wooden glass constructions as well as the open windows and doors are custom- made without using prefabricated windows and doors systems. Most of the furniture and doors are custom-made wooden or plywood pieces special design for this project.
Ground Floor Plan
The double height living space is oriented on the pond through the forest opening. The first sun rays delicate touches the open terrace and breakfast zone. By the day the hot sun stays behind the house and its shadow covers the terrace creating comfortable lounge zone. For one who want to take sunbathes there is the terrace on the roof or he can go directly to the sand beach near the pond. Evening rays together with long deep shadows fill the whole double height living space.
The main entrance is on the west side. There is a staff entrance to the bath service part next door but independent. A small parking is locked on the back left from the entrance zone.
Seciton 2-2
It is possible to go through the house to the terrace and when by the wide wooden outdoor staircase get to the pond or take a narrow rammed earth lane leading to water bypassing the house.
At the heart of the space-planning solutions stand the separation of the house in accordance with their functional in 2 similar parts with similar configuration in plan, but different in height and volume size. It was chosen the simple and clear composition of two prismatic volumes incutting each other at an angle of 90 degrees. High volume, almost completely glazed. The volume is located along the North-South axis, “hanging” over the terrain on the concrete fundament. It provides the advantage of specific characteristics view to the interior. Low volume is designed more as solid totally faced with paling. It is placed perpendicular to the high volume and parallel to the back yard with parking. Both volumes have flat roofs. One covered with wood and works as a terrace, another one is made with the organization of gravity layer to external drains. Roof surface sprinkled with crushed stone.
Section 1-1
On the ground floor are double height living space with small fireplace and dining zone, kitchen and restroom on one side. On the other side the bath&sauna zone with changing room, showers and relaxation tee room. From the relaxation area with sauna is provided an access to a spacious terrace with all-season use bath tube. All technical and staff spaces are in the separate part connected through the corridor and sauna with the main house and have entrance directly into the street through the glass door.
Simple wooden staircase leads to the first private floor. It has 2 bedrooms, each with its own bathroom and a common living room with small library. One of the walls in bathrooms and bedrooms and two in common space between them are total glazed. So you fill height in between trees.
The foundations of the house and terraces are made from reinforced concrete. On monolithic concrete base is organized a grid of load-bearing walls. From the walls comes trapezoidal consoles in different sides. The concrete surface is made to look raw and impure.
On the reinforced concrete basis a wooden bearing framework made of glulam.
Intermediate floors are also made of glued wooden elements and filled with insulation. Roofs have effective insulation, are exploited, it is the main waterproofing membrane.
The facades are faced with wooden vertical paling. Terraces are covered by terrace wooden bards.
For walls and floor finishing in bathrooms the water resistant lime plaster with different pigments is used. For floors and walls in kitchen and sauna zone –grey and white marble
‘Suitable Farmhouse’ is a villa for a mid 40 year old couple who decided to return to their hometown to live with their 80 year-old mother. The villa is intended to provide two individual households under one roof because each party has been upholding their own lifestyles for a long time. Two main private spaces are designed as two independent studios and they are located in opposite corners of the house. The mother has an active lifestyle, where she frequently comes and goes, while the couple is more introverted and reclusive, preferring to stay home, cook, and watch movies. The mother enjoys spending the majority of her time tending to the garden, while the couple enjoys inviting guests with whom to cook and entertain. These two varying sets of influence help to shape the design of this farmhouse.
To address their different lifestyles, the mother’s main space is located near the entrance, so that she can access the outdoors without disrupting the solitude of the couple. The couple’s primary space is located more privately on the inner side of the villa. Common spaces, which connect the two households, are enveloped by a slim flat roof which conjointly ties the two together making the villa both geometrically and spatially complete.
The client required a maximum 100m2 villa in order to get a financial support from their government, so the villa itself is designed as a compact and succinct house. The first strategy employed to achieve this is to create distinct zones for ‘service’ and ‘served.’ Service spaces directly serve the living plane: living/dining room and bed room. Thus, the service distances become short and convenient.
By observing the client’s previous house and lifestyle, the architect found that this family lacked a comfortable environment, and adequate storage to make their home suitable. Therefore, this farmhouse incorporates both passive heating and cooling strategies, as well as generous storage into its design. Storage shelves, and other fixed-furniture are designed and integrated as part of the architecture. A small sunroom, a ‘warm roof’ and double-layered folding glass doors are incorporated in order to make this dwelling energy efficient and climatically comfortable for its inhabitants.
A major challenge was to design useable outdoor spaces. Because of the compact size of the villa, 100m2, the residual site is almost 18 times the size of the home. The villa sits in the middle of the south-north oriented site, so the villa spatially divides the site into three distinct parts. Each piece naturally has its own unique character so the site design follows suit.
Plan
Upon arriving at the site, the first impression of the villa is a garden of lush green vegetables. The mother loves to grow all kinds of vegetables, and the fresh greens go directly from the garden to their daily dining table. Behind the vegetable garden, a small space welcomes people before entering the main villa, which is referred to as the Entrance Garden. This is a flexible space the family can use for various events and activities. On the other side of villa, the scenery changes completely. A very modern garden with green grass and colorful flowers which grow naturally on the site are preserved. A panoramic window is designed to fit seemly to the picturesque view from the dining table. Despite the proportionally large site, all the outdoor spaces contribute to this project’s character by bringing nature closer to the family.
Another challenging aspect was maximizing flexibility for the villa. Unlike city houses, a farmhouse needs plenty of space for the harvesting and processing of its produce seasonally. Thus, the villa was designed to have many expandable spaces according to occasional demands. For instance, the main kitchen inside the villa is compact, but a spacious utility room and outdoor facilities serve as a second kitchen.
Section
Following the logic of farming’s seasonal demands, the house also has occasional demands. As the family enjoys entertaining and cooking with friends and family, there is flexibility within the house’s social spaces as well. In addition, the garage was designed as a multifunctional social space by integrating parking with storage, loft and sub-kitchen.
Advantageously, many kinds of events can take place in the combined garage and Entrance Garden because the multipurpose garage creates a spacious enclosed area both inside and outside. Naturally, this family loves to invite friends and family to BBQs, parties, and to make Kimchi together with all their neighbors.
From the architect. This pavilion was designed to be painted…
Conceived of as an inhabitable painting in the shape of a house, the familiar form of the pavilion blurs the surfaces between the walls of a building and the painting displayed upon it.
The shape of the pavilion lends it a recognizable identity as a piece of domestic architecture, in which the art hung on its walls has assumed the identity of the structure by overtaking the house, and blurring the boundary between art and architecture.
Courtesy of Gelpi Projects
In this way the pavilion challenges the typical modes of art display, by reversing the hierarchy, whereby paintings are typically hung on walls. Here the pavilion emerges out of the compositional folds of the painting itself. What results is an ambiguous figure, almost a house, almost a painting, maybe a sculpture, but not quite the right size.
Courtesy of Gelpi Projects
On the exterior, the painting bleeds through the surface as a series of engraved lines. The engravings resemble typical exterior siding while at other times morph into meandering lines turning against the grain of the pavilion’s folds.
Diagram
The pavilion is built in two symmetrical halves on a steel frame with Detroit sourced industrial casters and is designed to be split open along a central seam. When opened the two halves create a space in between, allowing the surrounding environment to flow into the pavilion, and when closed they create an immersive interior environment, which is optically difficult to comprehend.
Courtesy of Gelpi Projects
The pavilion was also intended to exhibit the collaborative process itself. Formally, the pavilion was designed to act as a piece of inhabitable art and architecture, whose shape is drawn from the compositional strategies of the painter and the form making strategies of the architect.
Diagram
The process of collaboration involved the integration of the architect’s form and the artist’s composition. Each collaborator worked simultaneously with lines of pattern and folds integrating both into a single immersive field. Small scale sketches were enlarged to the scale of a building in an otherwise absurd act, and fabricated at the domestic scale of a house. This new synthesis in the pavilion serves to blur boundaries and find possibilities for new experiences between art and architecture.
Courtesy of Gelpi Projects
The pavilion was to be constructed of standard residential wood framing on 16 inch spacing, joined with lasercut steel gusset plates. Birch plywood panels were machined with grooves on the exterior displaying the underlying composition of the interior painting.
Courtesy of Gelpi Projects
Visitors to the gallery observe flat works of art hung on the walls, and when they encounter the freestanding pavilion are invited to enter inside where they become immersed within a 3 dimensional spatial painting. On the exterior, users explore the undulating folds of the plywood surfaces, peering inside through small windows strangely positioned within the compositional engravings of the exterior. Each of the individual openings frames a unique perspective of the pavilion’s interior, some low and some tall, creating a variety of unique views extracted from a single composition based on privileged perspectives in space.
Move out of the City of London? Not if you apply the concept of bespoke tailoring to where you live. A flat only 15 minutes from Tower Bridge has been completely redesigned by Studio Alexander Fehre. Intelligent use of this small space was guided by the owner’s living needs. An unusual kitchen solution freed up space in the living area, while integrating much greater functionality. The bathroom is now equipped with a spacious shower adding a quite luxurious touch, and the narrowness of the room was further enhanced. It all goes to show that 45m² in London can definitely be enough of a good thing.
Can you even talk about spaciousness and comfort with such a small floorplan? In London’s over-valued property market you hear a lot about large, exclusive flats that symbolise the constant struggle to find affordable housing close to the city’s centre. Smaller flats however make up the large majority of the city’s housing and can benefit to a much greater degree from considered interior planning. And following the established wisdom for making spaces appear larger than they actually are is not always the right response. With Filippo’s flat, we began by analysing the exact functions and requirements that the space should fulfil with the objective of exploiting every last square centimetre to the full. We determined that redistributing the flat’s layout would make a big difference, merging the living room, kitchen and small hallway to create one space. A black fishbone parquet floor brings a sense of clarity and cohesion to this spatial layout, while the shiny black, varnished finish creates additional depth. The dining area was moved into the kitchen and takes the form of a cosy sitting area painted in Valentino red. The existing kitchen window set high in the wall and the narrow width of the room combine to make the sitting area seem as if it had always been there. The semi-circular, banded wallpaper defines the dining area as a separate small space. Opposite the cleanly designed kitchen stands an open shelving unit made from veneered multiplex, which stretches through into the living room. It serves to connect both areas, while a sliding door can be closed to separate them if desired. As with the dining area, the use of a different wall and ceiling colour in the entrance area gives it a slightly different definition. The desk is optimally positioned at the window and fits in perfectly with the sequence of furniture in the living area.
Plan
Thanks to a large, L-shaped sofa, stepped table and circular mirror, the living area possesses a very striking lounge-like atmosphere. The bedroom is very narrow, so a platform was constructed that stretches from wall to wall. The bed is positioned on top, thereby structuring the room and making it easier to reach the rear window. The walls are painted a deep purple, contrasting beautifully with the wall-mounted shelving units. In the bathroom a conscious decision was made not to attempt to widen it, instead emphasising the length of this space through a combination of mirror, wallpaper and downlights. Thanks to the generous depth of the shower, it requires no second shower enclosure and the offset ceiling integrates it seamlessly into the overall design. The bathroom floor is covered in a woven vinyl, just like in the bedroom. The bathroom wallpaper accompanies you from the door to the basin and is also the determining element in the shower.
Although spaciousness is in the eye of the beholder, Studio Alexander Fehre presents a succinct, contemporary solution to the issue of progressive urbanisation.
Zaha Hadid’s sudden passing has led to an outpouring of heartfelt tributes from some of the profession’s most prominent figures. A “brave and radical” trailblazer, and the first woman to win the Pritzker Prize, Hadid’s significant impact on the world of architecture is undeniable. She will be missed.
“We are all shocked and devastated that we lost Zaha today, a most beautiful individual, talent, leader and friend,” Patrik Schumacher, Director of Zaha Hadid Architects, wrote on Facebook.
We will continue to update this link as more tributes come in.
Amanda Levete told ArchDaily: “I feel immensely privileged to have known Zaha as a very dear and loyal friend, as a confidante, and one of the most extraordinary talents of our time…. When my son was very young, Zaha showed him how to write his name in Arabic. It was the moment I realised the genesis of her remarkable architectural language. She was an extraordinary role model for women. She was fearless and a trailblazer – her work was brave and radical. Despite sometimes feeling misunderstood, she was widely celebrated and rightly so. I will miss her deeply as will the world of architecture.”
Angela Brady, former President of RIBA told The Guardian: “She was a tough architect, which is needed as a woman at the top of her profession and at the height of her career. She will be sadly missed as an iconic leader in architecture and as a role model for women in architecture.”
Boris Johnson, Mayor of London tweeted: “So sad to hear of death of Zaha Hadid, she was an inspiration and her legacy lives on in wonderful buildings in Stratford & around the world.”
Daniel Libeskind tweeted: “Devastated by the loss of a great architect & colleague today. Her spirit will live on in her work and studio. Our hearts go out.”
Jane Duncan, President of RIBA:“Dame Zaha Hadid was an inspirational woman, and the kind of architect one can only dream of being. Visionary and highly experimental, her legacy, despite her young age, is formidable… She leaves behind a body of work from buildings to furniture, footwear and cars, that delight and astound people all around the world. The world of architecture has lost a star today.”
John McAslan told AJ: “This is devastating and tragic news. Zaha Hadid was a phenomenal force in the world of architecture. An incredible character – brilliant, fearless, and irreplaceable.”
Michael Kimmelman: “Sad news. She was astonishing, a groundbreaker, including as a powerful woman who showed that great architecture is not just a man’s game.”
Odile Decq told AJ: “The first Grande Dame de l’architecture and a great figure in many ways. She has open so many doors for women in architecture. She has become free and without any fear after having been forced to fight against sexist attitudes. Her architecture reveals her own freedom.”
Paola Antonelli, MoMA’s Senior Curator of Architecture & Design tweeted: “I am so so so shocked, I have no words.”
Paul Goldberger tweeted: “Shocked and deeply saddened to hear the news of Zaha Hadid’s death: one of the great architectural figures of our time.”
Pritzker Architecture Prize: “The Pritzker Family and the Pritzker Architecture Prize organization are deeply saddened by the passing of Dame Zaha Hadid. She was truly a pioneer in the field of architecture. The 2004 Pritzker Architecture Prize laureate, she represents the highest aspirations of the Pritzker Architecture Prize. She also served on the jury for one year. Zaha Hadid will be remembered for her talent, creativity, commitment, loyalty and friendship.”
Richard Rogers told The Guardian:“She was a great architect, a wonderful woman and wonderful person… Among architects emerging in the last few decades, no one had any more impact than she did. She fought her way through as a woman. She was the first woman to win the Pritzker prize.”
Yale School of Architecture: “Architecture today lost one of it’s greatest. Zaha Hadid has died. Zaha was the current Norman R. Foster Visiting Professor at the Yale School of Architecture where she had taught regularly since 2001. She will be greatly, greatly, missed.”
Of the many prescient things Rem Koolhaas has written, few are as spot on as this transcript from his days Zaha's tutor…
From the architect. A design competition for the Institutional Building of the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development in the O’Higgins Region, was called in order to recover the long time disregarded lot of the former prison of Rancagua. The land is embedded in a consolidated commercial area close to the train station. The future building must include two independent units: SERVIU and SEREMI. The lot subdivision strategy was part of the proposal, leaving land available for future development.
The contest called for a building that also includes an idea for a civic urban complex.
The project is an opportunity to act directly on the city. As headquarters for the ministry in charge of planning and territorial development, it was relevant to complement paths and public spaces of the place, in order to improve them. The surrounding buildings have continuous facade and total occupation of the land, making difficult the environmental contact between interiors and exterior.
Site Plan
The dispersion of windows is intended as an optimal strategy to have natural light and ventilation in all offices. The building figure keeps the empty inside the block, having complementary interior/exterior relation.
The site was closed for a 4.5 m. height wall, obstructing the block, resulting in stretches sidewalks without associated programs. The new building -110 meters long and 10 wide- opens an internal garden and public walkway, connecting two parallel streets. With this, the old reclusion interior became open and inclusive for the city. The two main entrances -one for SERVIU, the other for SEREMI- are placed at each end of the building, activating both streets sidewalk too.
The floors are arranged with a central aisle and lateral working spaces. The geometric relationship with the sun is mediated with a system of prefabricated concrete panels, arranged in a combination of parallels and perpendiculars to the facade, allowing distant views and avoiding direct light on desktops. All spaces, including the central corridor are naturally illuminated.
The regulations requires for continuous facade. The proposal replaced the old closed wall with a controlled transparency facade, showing the promenade and interior gardens.
The distance to the edges that the gardens imply, ensures views from the offices to the mountain of the Cordillera de los Andes and Cordillera de la Costa, which borders the valley where the city of Rancagua is located.
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:
It is with great sadness that Zaha Hadid Architects have confirmed that Dame Zaha Hadid, DBE died suddenly in Miami in the early hours of this morning. She had contracted bronchitis earlier this week and suffered a sudden heart attack while being treated in hospital.
Zaha Hadid was widely regarded to be the greatest female architect in the world today. Born in Baghdad in 1950, she studied mathematics at the American University of Beirut before starting her architectural journey in 1972 at the Architectural Association in London.
By 1979 she had established her own practice in London – Zaha Hadid Architects – garnering a reputation across the world for her ground-breaking theoretical works including The Peak in Hong Kong (1983), the Kurfürstendamm in Berlin (1986) and the Cardiff Bay Opera House in Wales (1994).
Working with office partner Patrik Schumacher, her interest was in the interface between architecture, landscape, and geology; which her practice integrates with the use of innovative technologies often resulting in unexpected and dynamic architectural forms.
Zaha Hadid’s first major built commission, one that affirmed her international recognition, was the Vitra Fire Station in Weil Am Rhein, Germany (1993); subsequent notable projects including the MAXXI: Italian National Museum of 21st Century Arts in Rome (2009), the London Aquatics Centre for the 2012 Olympic Games (2011) and the Heydar Aliyev Centre in Baku (2013) illustrate her quest for complex, fluid space. Buildings such as the Rosenthal Center for Contemporary Art in Cincinnati (2003) and the Guangzhou Opera House in China (2010) have also been hailed as architecture that transforms our ideas of the future with visionary spatial concepts defined by advanced design, material and construction processes.
In 2004, Zaha Hadid became the first woman to be awarded the Pritzker Architecture Prize. She twice won the UK’s most prestigious architecture award, the RIBA Stirling Prize: in 2010 for the MAXXI Museum in Rome, a building for the staging of 21st century art, the distillation of years of experimentation, a mature piece of architecture conveying a calmness that belies the complexities of its form and organisation; and the Evelyn Grace Academy, a unique design, expertly inserted into an extremely tight site, that shows the students, staff and local residents they are valued and celebrates the school’s specialism throughout its fabric, with views of student participation at every turn.
Zaha Hadid’s other awards included the Republic of France’s Commandeur de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, Japan’s Praemium Imperiale and in 2012, Zaha Hadid was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire. She was made Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and Fellow of the American Institute of Architecture.
She held various academic roles including the Kenzo Tange Chair at the Graduate School of Design, Harvard University; the Sullivan Chair at the University of Illinois, School of Architecture. Hadid also taught studios at Columbia University, Yale University and the University of Applied Arts in Vienna.
Zaha Hadid was recently awarded the RIBA’s 2016 Royal Gold Medal, the first woman to be awarded the prestigious honour in her own right. On the occasion, Sir Peter Cook wrote the following citation:
“In our current culture of ticking every box, surely Zaha Hadid succeeds, since (to quote the Royal Gold Medal criteria) she is someone “who has made a significant contribution to the theory or practice of architecture…. for a substantial body of work rather than for work which is currently fashionable.” Indeed her work, though full of form, style and unstoppable mannerism, possesses a quality that some of us might refer to as an impeccable ‘eye’: which we would claim is a fundamental in the consideration of special architecture and is rarely satisfied by mere ‘fashion’.
And surely her work is special. For three decades now, she has ventured where few would dare: if Paul Klee took a line for a walk, then Zaha took the surfaces that were driven by that line out for a virtual dance and then deftly folded them over and then took them out for a journey into space. In her earlier, ‘spiky’ period there was already a sense of vigour that she shared with her admired Russian Suprematists and Constructivists – attempting with them to capture that elusive dynamic of movement at the end of the machine age.
Necessarily having to disperse effort through a studio production, rather than being a lone artist, she cottoned–on to the potential of the computer to turn space upon itself. Indeed there is an Urban Myth that suggests that the very early Apple Mac ‘boxes’ were still crude enough to plot the mathematically unlikely – and so Zaha with her mathematics background seized upon this and made those flying machine projections of the Hong Kong Peak project and the like. Meanwhile, with paintings and special small drawings Zaha continued to lead from the front. She has also been smart enough to pull in some formidable computational talent without being phased by its ways.
Thus the evolution of the ‘flowing’ rather than spikey architecture crept up upon us in stages, as did the scale of her commissions, but in most cases, they remained clear in identity and control. When you entered the Fire Station at Vitra, you were conscious of being inside one of those early drawings and yes, it could be done. Yet at perhaps its highest, those of us lucky enough to see the Heydar Aliyev Center in Baku in the flesh, can surely never have been in such a dream-like space, with its totality, its enormous internal ramp and dart-like lights seeming to have come from a vocabulary that lies so far beyond the normal architecture that we assess or rationalize.
So we are presenting her with this Medal as a British Institution: and as a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire: thus she might seem to be a member of our British Establishment. Yet in reality, many of our chattering classes and not a few fellow architects have treated her with characteristic faint praise, and when she heroically won the Cardiff Opera House competition, blocking the scheme. Or when we awarded her the RIBA Stirling Prize for the school in South London – her second win in a row – we, the jury, were loudly derided by a number of distinguished architects. Of course, in our culture of circumspection and modesty her work is certainly not modest, and she herself is the opposite of modest. Indeed her vociferous criticism of poor work or stupidity recalls the line-side comments of the tennis player John McEnroe. Yet this is surely characteristic of the seriousness with which she takes the whole business: sloppiness and waywardness pain her and she cannot play the comfy
British game of platitudinous waffle that is the preferred cushion adopted by many people of achievement or power. Her methods and perhaps much of her psychology remain Mesopotamian and not a little scary: but certainly clear.
As a result, it is perhaps a little lonely there up at the top, surrounded now by some very considerable talent in the office, but feared somewhat and distanced from the young. Yet in private Zaha is gossipy and amusing, genuinely interested in the work of talented colleagues who do very different architecture such as Steven Holl, and she was the first to bring to London talent such as Lebbeus Woods or Stanley Saiotowitz. She is exceptionally loyal to her old friends: many of whom came from the Alvin Boyarsky period of the Architectural Association: which seems to remain as her comfort zone and golden period of friendship. Encouraged and promoted at an early age by Boyarsky, she has rewarded the AA with an unremitting loyalty and fondness for it.
The history of the Gold Medal must surely include many major figures who commanded a big ship and one ponders upon the operation involved that gets such strong concepts as the MAXXI in Rome – in which the power of organization is so clear – or the Bergisel Ski Jump in Innsbruck where dynamic is at last captured – or the Aquatics Centre for the London Olympics where the lines diving boards were as fluid as the motion of the divers – made into reality. And she has done it time and time again in Vienna, Marseilles, Beijing and Guangzhou. Never has she been so prolific, so consistent. We realize that Kenzo Tange and Frank Lloyd Wright could not have drawn every line or checked every joint, yet Zaha shares with them the precious role of towering, distinctive and relentless influence upon all around her that sets the results apart from the norm. Such self-confidence is easily accepted in film-makers and football managers, but causes some architects to feel uncomfortable, maybe they’re secretly jealous of her unquestionable talent. Let’s face it, we might have awarded the medal to a worthy, comfortable character. We didn’t, we awarded it to Zaha: larger than life, bold as brass and certainly on the case.
Our Heroine. How lucky we are to have her in London.”
Zaha Hadid received the RIBA Royal Gold Medal in February 2016. Image via RIBA
Jane Duncan, President of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA), who awarded Hadid the Royal Gold Medal, has said:
This is absolutely terrible news. Dame Zaha Hadid was an inspirational woman, and the kind of architect one can only dream of being. Visionary and highly experimental, her legacy despite her young age, is formidable. She leaves behind a body of work from buildings to furniture, footwear and cars, that delight and astound people all around the world. It was only last month that I had the enviable task of awarding Zaha the 2016 Royal Gold Medal for architecture – she was delighted to receive the recognition and adds the medal to an amazing collection of awards, not least winning the RIBA Stirling Prize two years running. The world of architecture has lost a star today.
Details of Zaha Hadid’s memorial service will be announced shortly.
Sig Nordal 