Pritzker Prize-Winning Architect Zaha Hadid’s Crafts Designs That Go With The Flow

Pritzker Prize-Winning Architect Zaha Hadid’s Crafts Designs That Go With The Flow

“My ambition has always been to create fluid space,” says Iraqi‐born British architect Zaha Hadid. “Our clients have always been very interested in applying new design, construction and material technologies to improve living and working conditions, as well as to enhance communication and interaction between the users of a building. Architecture does not follow fashion, political or economic cycles – it follows the inherent logic of cycles of innovation generated by social and technological developments – and buildings must evolve with new patterns of life to meet the needs of its users. What is new in our generation are the much greater levels of social complexity and connectivity. With over 50 percent of the world’s growing population now living in cities, contemporary urbanism and architecture must move beyond the outdated 20^th-century architecture of square blocks and repetition towards architecture for the 21^st-century that manages the increasing complexities, dynamism and densities of our lives today. Consequently, my work is operating with concepts, logic and methods that examine and organize the complexities of our lives today. People ask, ‘Why are there no 90 degrees in your work?’ This is because life is not made in a grid. If you think of a natural landscape, it’s not even and regular – but people go to these places and think it’s very natural, very relaxing. I think that one can do that in architecture.”

Hadid doesn’t believe in straight lines and rectangular design, but her works radically reinterpret the spaces we occupy. Advancing anarchitecture that is intuitive, daring, international and dynamic, her past 36 years have been an exploration of systems of continuous transformations and smooth transitions. Take for example her Mobile Art Pavilion for Chanel. Not the traditional white cube exhibition space composed of lines and symmetry, the spaceship-like sculpture-building instead proposes organic logic – curves, spirals and unevenness abound – and encourages multiple viewpoints, where it’s not just about looking but a complete sensory experience. Changing our perception of space, it becomes an entire landscape to wander around in a completely unexpected way. Then there’s her MAXXI National Museum of 21^st Century Arts in Rome, Italy, organized and navigated on the basis of directional drifts and the distribution of densities, which encompasses both overlapping tendril-like paths and open spaces with walls that constantly intersect and separate. Not to be considered just one building but several, the goal was to move away from the idea of “the museum as an object” and towards the idea of a “field of buildings”. The conventional museum wall also transforms into a versatile engine for the staging of exhibition effects – solid surface, projection screen, canvas or window to the city – and becomes the primary space-making device. Further departures from classical composition take place where the walls become floors, twist to become ceilings or are voided to become large windows.

At the age of 64, Hadid is one of the world’s most sought-after architects and the first woman to receive the Pritzker Architecture Prize (the Nobel Prize of architecture) in 2004. Her three-decade-long career has been the subject of retrospectives at the Guggenheim Museum and MOMA in New York, the Design Museum and Tate Modern in London, Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Venice Architecture Biennale and the Palazzo della Ragione in Padua. She has been honored with the Praemium Imperiale from the Japan Art Association, the Stirling Prize from the Royal Institute of British Architects and the Commander of the Order of Arts and Letters from the French government, and Time magazine named her one of the “100 Most Influential People in the World” in 2010.

Filed under: Headlines by RoshniShah
Comments Off on Pritzker Prize-Winning Architect Zaha Hadid’s Crafts Designs That Go With The Flow