“I have always been interested in the concept of fragmentation and with ideas of abstraction and explosion, de-constructing ideas of repetitiveness and mass production. My work first engaged with the early Russian avant-garde; in particular with the work of Kasimir Malevich – he was an early influence for me as a representative of the modern avant-garde intersection between art and design. Malevich discovered abstraction as an experimental principle that can propel creative work to previously unheard levels of invention; this abstract work allowed much greater levels of creativity.” Zaha Hadid, 2007 This winter, the Serpentine presents an exhibition of paintings and drawings by renowned architect Zaha Hadid (1950-2016). Zaha Hadid is regarded as a pioneering and visionary architect whose contribution to the world of architecture was ground-breaking and innovative. The Serpentine presentation, first conceived with Hadid herself, will reveal her as an artist with drawing at the very heart of her work and will include the architect’s calligraphic drawings and rarely seen private notebooks with sketches that reveal her complex thoughts about architectural forms and relationships. The show will focus on Hadid’s early works before her first building was erected in 1993 (the Vitra Fire Station in Germany), presenting paintings and drawings from the 1970s to the early 1990s.

Press Release

ZAHA HADID EARLY PAINTINGS AND DRAWINGS 8 DECEMBER 2016 – 12 FEBRUARY 2017 SERPENTINE SACKLER GALLERY In partnership with Swarovski

The exhibition will take place at the Serpentine Sackler Gallery, renovated and extended by Zaha Hadid Architects in 2013. A select number of institutions and museums across the world will join in this timely homage to Zaha Hadid. Drawing and painting were fundamental to Hadid’s practice. Influenced by Malevich, Tatlin and Rodchenko, she used calligraphic drawings as the main method for visualising her architectural ideas. For Hadid, painting was a design tool, and abstraction an investigative structure for imagining architecture and its relationship to the world we live in. These works on paper and canvas unravel an architecture that Hadid was determined to realise in built structures, one that is seen in the characteristic lightness and weightlessness of her buildings. Conceived as Hadid’s manifesto of a utopian world, the show reveals her all-encompassing vision for arranging space and interpreting realities. Technology and innovation have always been central to the work of Zaha Hadid Architects, and many of Hadid’s paintings prefigure the potential of digital processes and the software required to render virtual reality. Connecting directly with the individual paintings in this exhibition, four experimental virtual reality experiences have been specially developed in collaboration with Google Arts & Culture. These in-gallery experiences will offer a dynamic and immersive insight into Hadid’s architectural vision. Hans Ulrich Obrist, Serpentine Galleries Artistic Director and Yana Peel, CEO said: “We are honoured to be presenting this exhibition of our friend and long-term collaborator Zaha Hadid here at the Serpentine Sackler Gallery, designed by her practice in 2013. Her contribution to architecture as a pioneer and visionary cannot be overstated, and her declaration that ‘there should be no end to experimentation’ has become a mantra for the Serpentine Galleries as it looks to the future.” Brian Clarke, artist said: “Zaha was both architect and artist. As she said: ‘I get the same goose-bumps from Bacon as I get from Niemeyer.’" Nadja Swarovski, Member of the Swarovski executive board: said: “We are pleased to be supporting the Serpentine Galleries for this exhibition. Swarovski was honoured to collaborate with Zaha for over a decade, creating an incredible body of work which ranged from lighting installations to sculpture, jewelry and home decor. Her vision always pushed us outside our comfort zone, and the results were breathtaking. I feel extremely privileged to have known her both as a friend and as a creative collaborator.” Amit Sood, Director of Google Arts & Culture, said: "The opportunity to develop four experimental, virtual reality experiences that offer visitors new insights into Zaha Hadid's creative vision was a real privilege for us. We hope people enjoy connecting with Hadid's paintings in a new, immersive way." The Serpentine has had a long relationship with Hadid, which begun in 1996 when she joined as a Trustee of the Serpentine Gallery. Her first structure in London was the inaugural Serpentine Pavilion in 2000. It was followed by a light installation, Lilas, in 2007. In 2013, she completed the extension for the Serpentine Sackler Gallery, one of Zaha Hadid Architects’ first permanent buildings in central London. She also participated in the Serpentine’s Interview Marathon in 2006 and 89Plus Marathon in 2013.

The exhibition will coincide with the opening of Zaha Hadid Architects’ much anticipated Mathematics: The Winton Gallery at the Science Museum, which will explore how mathematicians, their tools and ideas have helped to shape the modern world. Serpentine Winter Season Zaha Hadid’s statement that “there should be no end to experimentation” is key to understanding her radical approach to architecture, as well as providing a useful perspective on the multi-faceted practice of Lucy Raven, showing concurrently at the Serpentine Gallery. Both artists are interested in drawing attention to the spaces that surround us, be it through Raven’s moving image installations, which reveal the structures and mechanisms of cinematic imagery, or Hadid’s visionary art and architecture. Hadid’s integration of innovative technologies into her practice, resulting in unexpected and dynamic forms, is paralleled in Raven’s exploration of technology, revealing the labour and processes behind the manufacture and distribution of images throughout the world. For press information contact: Nancy Groves, nancyg@serpentinegalleries.org, +44 (0)20 7298 1544 V Ramful, v@serpentinegalleries.org, +44 (0)20 7298 1519 Press images at serpentinegalleries.org/press Serpentine Gallery, Kensington Gardens, London W2 3XA Serpentine Sackler Gallery, West Carriage Drive, Kensington Gardens, London W2 2AR Image Credit: Vision for Madrid, Spain 1992 Copyright Zaha Hadid Architects

Notes to Editors About Zaha Hadid Born in Baghdad, Zaha Hadid (1950-2016) studied mathematics at the American University of Beirut before studying architecture 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). Hadid was a Pritzker Laureate and had recently received the RIBA Gold Medal. Her first realised building was the Vitra Fire Station in Weil am Rhein, Germany, in 1993. Zaha Hadid Exhibition Partner: Swarovski Swarovski & Zaha Hadid Swarovski has been at the forefront of design for the past 120 years, collaborating with the best creative minds to push the boundaries of innovation. For more than a decade Swarovski partnered with Zaha Hadid on numerous projects: in 2007, they worked together on Fade, a sculpture presented in the gardens of the Serpentine Galleries; in 2008 on the Light Sculpture chandelier at Salone del Mobile as part of Swarovski Crystal Palace; and in 2013 on Prima, an outdoor installation and table-top collection to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Hadid’s Vitra Fire Station. Earlier this year, Hadid created Crista, a sculptural centrepiece for the debut Atelier Swarovski Home collection that made use of Swarovski’s innovative Wave Cut technology, allowing curved forms to be cut in crystal for the first time.

Sweeping and architectural, it is a true reflection of Zaha’s pioneering spirit and visionary design aesthetic. Google Arts & Culture Google Arts & Culture is a new, immersive way to experience art, history, culture and world wonders from over a thousand organizations worldwide. Google Arts & Culture has been created by the Google Cultural Institute and it is available for free for everyone on the web, on iOS and Android.

ZAHA HADID: EARLY PAINTINGS AND DRAWINGS SERPENTINE SACKLER GALLERY 8 DECEMBER 2016 – 12 FEBRUARY 2017 LIST OF WORKS All works are Copyright Zaha Hadid Foundation Malevich’s Tektonik, 1976 – 77

Horizontal Tektonik, 2015 Acrylic on cartridge paper 177 x 244,4 cm

Museum of the Nineteenth Century London, UK, 1977 – 78

Axonometric, 1978 Acrylic on cartridge paper 170 x 66 cm

Longitudinal Section, 1978 Acrylic on cartridge paper 75 x 186 cm

Extension of the Dutch Parliament, The Hague, The Netherlands, 1978 – 79

The Ambulatory and its Connection, 1991 Ink drawing on Mylar, mounted on linen 151,3 x 138,3 cm Irish Prime Minister’s Residence, Dublin, Ireland, 1979 – 80

Isometric Plan, 1980 Acrylic, watercolour and ink on paper 184 x 104,5 cm

The Peak, Hong Kong, China, 1982 – 83

Blue Slabs, 1983 Acrylic on canvas 187,5 x 286 cm

Confetti: Suprematist Snowstorm, 1983 Acrylic on cartridge paper 91 x 275 cm

Overall Isometric, Day View, 1983 Acrylic on cartridge paper 184 x 132 cm Series of 16 Sketches, 1983 Digital colour print on tracing paper 42 x 29 cm (each)

Site Plan, 1982 Black ink on Mylar 133 x 77 cm

Long Section, 1982 Black ink on Mylar 138 x 86 cm

Section of Club, 1982 Black ink on Mylar 137 x 86 cm

Compiled Plans, 1982 Black ink on Mylar 103 x 132 cm

Section through Studios, Apartments, Void and Penthouses, 1982 Black ink on Mylar 94 x 104 cm

Section through Lobby and Lift, 1982 Black ink on Mylar 94 x 104 cm

Section through Club, Restaurant, Bar, Service Areas and Penthouses, 1982 Black ink on Mylar 94 x 104 cm

Blue Slabs, Drawing, 1983 Ink on Mylar laminated to canvas 152,5 x 263 cm The World (89 Degrees) 1983

The World (89 Degrees), 1983 Acrylic on canvas 189 x 220 cm

Grand Building, Trafalgar Square, London, UK, 1985

Grand Buildings, 1985 Acrylic on canvas 250 x 140 cm

Site Plan, 1985 Ink on Mylar 263,5 x 104 cm

Grand Buildings, 1985 Ink on Mylar 266,5 x 130,5 cm

Bird’s Eye View, 1985 Acrylic on cartridge paper 66,5 x 59 cm

Elevation towards Trafalgar Square (Night View), 1985 Acrylic on cartridge paper 68,5 x 62 cm

View from Trafalgar Square, 1985 Acrylic on cartridge paper 63 x 61 cm Metropolis, 1988

Metropolis, 2014 Acrylic on canvas 548 x 239 cm

Berlin 2000, 1988

Berlin 2000, 1988 Acrylic on cartridge paper, mounted on gatorfoam 225 x 192 cm Victoria City Aerial, Berlin, Germany, 1988

Aerial Perspective, 1988 Acrylic on cartridge paper 254,5 x 99,5 cm

Blue Beam, 1988 Acrylic on cartridge paper 253,5 x 99 cm

Hafenstrasse Development, Hamburg, Germany 1989

Yellow Perspectives, 1991 Acrylic on cartridge paper 177 x 100 cm

Elevation Studies , 1990 Acrylic on cartridge paper 121 x 100 cm

Corner Building Rotation, 1989 Acrylic on cartridge paper 240 x 125,5 cm Sketches and Drawings, 1989/2016 Colour print on white foamex

Hommage à Verner Panton, 1990

Hommage à Verner Panton, 1990 Acrylic on black cartridge paper 220 x 115 cm Leicester Square, London, UK, 1990

Blue and Green Scrapers, 1990 Acrylic on black cartridge paper 230,5 x 111,5 cm London 2066, London, UK, 1991

London 2066, for British Vogue, 1991 Acrylic on cartridge paper 258 x 110,5 cm

Vision for Madrid, Madrid, Spain, 1992

Vision for Madrid, 1992 Acrylic on cartridge paper 174 x 365,5 cm

Painting Study of Linear Expansion, 1993 Acrylic on cartridge paper 82 x 59 cm

Small Orange on White I, 1993 Acrylic on cartridge paper 82 x 59 cm

Small Grey on White III, 1993 Acrylic on cartridge paper 82 x 59 cm

Black, White, Grey, Orange Beams on White, 1993 Acrylic on cartridge paper 82 x 59 cm

City Grid on White, 1993 Acrylic on cartridge paper 82 x 59 cm

Small Grey on White II, 1993 Acrylic on cartridge paper 82 x 59 cm Sketches and Drawings, 1992/2016 Colour print on white foamex The Great Utopia: The Russian and Soviet Avant-Garde 1915 – 1932, New York, USA, 1992 – 93

Tectonic, “The Great Utopia”, 1992 Acrylic and watercolour on cartridge paper 101,5 x 191 cm

Tatlin Tower and Tectonic "Worldwind", 1992 Acrylic and watercolour on cartridge paper 186 x 105 cm Sketches and Drawings, 1992–93/2016 Colour print on white foamex 29,7 x 29,7 cm Rheinauhafen Development, Cologne, Germany, 1993

Isometric of the City Context, 1983 Acrylic on cartridge paper 256 x 101,6 cm Virtual Reality Virtual Reality Experiences, 2016 Zaha Hadid: Early Paintings and Drawings at the Serpentine Sackler Gallery, including the paintings The World (89 Degrees), 1983; The Great Utopia: Tatlin Tower and Tectonic “Worldwind”, 1992–93;

The Peak: Blue Slabs, 1983; Leicester Square: Blue and Green Scrapers, 1990 © Zaha Hadid Foundation In partnership with Google Arts & Culture

structures created as individual dwellings by a thriving alternative community of architects, poets and mathematicians, amongst others. It is this social aspect of architecture that has informed our approach to curating and commissioning each Pavilion at the Serpentine Galleries. The ethos of the cultural commune inspired a collaborative approach that has made it possible to overcome the seemingly impossible challenges of a process that requires the flexibility of the architects as well as the courage of the team to develop each project in an unexpected way. The ‘one for all, all for one’ spirit with which architect, client, engineers, fabricators and stakeholders work is something that the Serpentine Galleries embraces with great enthusiasm.

Commissioning work to be installed on the Gallery’s lawn is not new to the Serpentine. In 1996–97, while renovations to the Gallery were being carried out, five artists were invited to make works for Kensington Gardens in a project called Inside Out, which included Rasheed Araeen’s imposing scaffolding-like installation; Bill Culbert’s piece involving tip-trucks parked on the Gallery lawn and loaded with an ethereal blue light; a small-scale, tree-themed installation by Richard Deacon; Anya Gallaccio’s Keep Off the Grass, which involved cultivating seeds planted in areas left from the preceding commissions on the lawn in order to restore the grass; and Tadashi Kawamata’s large-scale construction using materials salvaged from the Gallery’s renovation project.

Similarly, for this year’s Serpentine Architecture Programme, we organised a group show of different architectural practices in the Serpentine’s surroundings. In tandem with the Serpentine Pavilion 2016 by Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG), we expanded the programme by commissioning four Summer Houses designed by Kunlé Adeyemi (NLÉ), Barkow Leibinger, Yona Friedman and Asif Khan. The decision to ask these four architects to respond to the context of Queen Caroline’s Temple, constructed by William Kent in 1734–5, provided them with a focus that would steer the design of their structures and embed them into the very heart of the Park and the history of Queen Caroline. As Vicky Richardson notes in her essay, also published within this catalogue, Queen Caroline’s ambitious series of commissions, improvements and interventions in Kensington Gardens contributed ‘to creating a new art form: that of picturesque landscape design’.

EXHIBITING ARCHITECTUREIn 2000, on the occasion of the Serpentine Gallery’s thirtieth anniversary, we invited Zaha Hadid to design a temporary structure in which to host a gala dinner on the Gallery’s lawn. Conceived as a project that would stand for one night only, the structure was so successful that it led Chris Smith, the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, to arrange for Hadid’s structure to remain on the lawn for the entire summer. We did not know it yet, but Hadid’s triangulated structure, which radically reinvented the idea of a marquee, was in fact the inaugural Serpentine Pavilion and the start of our important collaboration with the architect. When Hadid became a Trustee in 1996, she joined Lord Palumbo, Chairman of the Serpentine Galleries’ Board of Trustees, whose support and ambition allowed the Galleries’ to explore this new strand of the Serpentine’s work.

The Serpentine Pavilion showcases the language of an architect’s practice and chimes with our ambition to commission the best possible work by some of the most exciting practitioners of today. In a curatorial sense, what we do with this annual architecture commission is no different from the ambitious commissioning of artists that has always been integral to the Serpentine’s programme. Just as we make art exhibitions, we also make architecture exhibitions. But in this case, ‘making’ means actually building. Because the Pavilion is an exhibition of an architect’s work in a built form, we have transferred our expertise in the visual arts to architecture, applying our model of working with artists as a reference point with which to engage architects and their practices. Over sixteen years, the curatorial process at the very heart of the commission has made it possible to think the unthinkable – common in the art world, perhaps, but less usual in the field of architecture.

Curating is also about educating, informing and changing the rules of how we perceive the arts. The Serpentine’s model of realising the Pavilion is very much in keeping with this idea. Our approach to presenting architecture is to offer the possibility of actually experiencing architecture. Unless you stand in a structure, you cannot appreciate the way the light plays on the walls and the feel of its materials. How can one decipher the geometric algorithm of Toyo Ito’s 2002 Serpentine Pavilion without physically seeing its complexity? What is it like to be inside a building designed by the great Oscar Niemeyer (Serpentine Pavilion 2003), the legendary architect of Brasilia City? How does the green Park look when framed by the intense redness of Jean Nouvel’s Pavilion (Serpentine Pavilion 2010)? Does Rem Koolhaas balloon-like Pavilion really breathe (Serpentine Pavilion 2006)? How does the light filter through the skin of Smiljan Radić’s shell-like structure (Serpentine Pavilion 2014)? Does the experience of walking through Sou Fujimoto’s Pavilion (2013) really feel like being in a digital cloud?

The purpose of this annual architecture commission is both simple and modest: to give architects of our time the opportunity to display their work in a public setting, and for the first time in England, as well as to provide a continuously changing project that makes tangible the visions of commissioned architects. It is a way to find an innovative curatorial solution to the problem of presenting architecture and to maximise our location in The Royal Parks. Throughout the summer months, Kensington Gardens is used as a playground by people of all ages for a wide variety of different activities including dog-walking, skating, bicycling and swimming. The Serpentine Pavilion can be returned to countless times. It is a place where love affairs start, books are read, friends meet, or where people come simply to sit, rest and contemplate. One of the great wonders of the programme is that people inhabit these structures as if they have been in situ for years.

A defining experience that inspired the commissioning of the Serpentine’s Pavilions was Open City, Chile, a group of radically innovative architectural

Reflections on Curating and Commissioning Architecture: 16 Years of Serpentine PavilionsJulia Peyton-Jones

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A combination of creativity and pragmatics is what drives the Pavilion commission, which comes together under a fixed and self-imposed brief. The architects are asked to consider the historical, social and physical context of the Serpentine, its setting in The Royal Parks and the history and design of the existing building. They are also asked to consider the Serpentine’s cultural mission, the visitor’s experience of the Galleries’ programmes within the natural setting in urban London, and the summer context in which the project takes place. The overall height of the structure should not exceed that of the existing building, embracing the natural light of high summer and respecting the surrounding trees protected by The Royal Parks. The Pavilion also houses a temporary café and acts as a space for public programming and education projects throughout the summer.

When Hans Ulrich Obrist joined the Gallery as Co-Director and Director of International Exhibitions and Projects in 2006, the Pavilion found a new purpose as a site for the first Serpentine Marathon (the following three Marathons were also held in the Pavilion) before moving to The Magazine restaurant adjacent to the Serpentine Sackler Gallery designed by Zaha Hadid Architects, which opened to the public in 2013. The first Marathon, which took place over twenty-four hours, was held in Rem Koolhaas’ spectacular oval-shaped inflatable canopy, made from translucent material. The architect’s intention was that the Pavilion should be an ‘architecture of content’, or a ‘content-machine’, and thus his structure was a highly fitting venue for the Marathon. The Serpentine Marathon is a festival of continuous performance, talks and conversations, and dedicated each year to a particular theme or topic, with subjects including experiments, manifestos, poetry, maps, gardens, memory, millennials and extinction.

AFTERLIVES Within an ever-changing climate of funding within the arts, exhibition-making has been challenged and has evolved over time. We believe that it is the responsibility of a not-for-profit institution like the Serpentine to explore the idea of an elasticity of purpose, of freshness, playfulness and experimentation. With the Pavilion commission, we have had to learn, with no prior expertise in the field, and no budget to realise our ambitions, to make this challenge a reality.

A prerequisite for the realisation of the Pavilions is that they are acquired following their presentation at the Serpentine. This vital aspect of their funding also determines that they will have a life after their exhibition at the Serpentine. At the time of writing, Zaha Hadid’s Pavilion can be visited at Flambards Theme Park, Cornwall; Toyo Ito’s structure is in the grounds of Le Beauvallon private property in Sainte-Maxine, France, and Sou Fujimoto’s structure (Serpentine Pavilion 2013) is on exhibition in Tirana, Albania, courtesy of the LUMA Foundation. Smiljan Radić’s 2014 Pavilion, a semi-translucent, cylindrical structure that is inspired by the follies popular between the late sixteenth and early nineteenth centuries, is now situated at Hauser & Wirth Somerset.

Hadid’s Pavilion was followed in 2001 by Daniel Libeskind’s Eighteen Turns, a dynamic sequence of sheer metallic planes created in partnership with Cecil Balmond and the help of structural engineers Arup. With a timescale of only a few months, the process was both exciting and challenging. The exhilarating race to submit an application for planning permission, enlisting the support of all those who had a view about the project and fundraising in time for the opening, provided all the characteristics that would be played out over the next fourteen years.

The invitation to Toyo Ito to design the 2002 Pavilion was made six months in advance of the project’s realisation. He proposed to install an existing structure, which was in a location in Ghent, but the concept at the heart of the project was that it must be a new commission. The initial discussions involved the structural engineer Cecil Balmond, who flew with me to Tokyo for the design meeting with Ito and his team, a fascinating process that resulted in the final concept being agreed upon as we left for the airport. The design appeared to be an extremely complex random pattern that proved, upon careful examination, to derive from an algorithm of a cube that expanded as it rotated. The numerous triangles and trapezoids formed by this system of intersecting lines were clad in either transparent or translucent material, giving a sense of infinitely repeated motion.

In the fourth year of the commission, I went to Rio de Janeiro to meet with Oscar Niemeyer, who was introduced to us by Hadid. The visit had been preceded by months of attempts to reach the great man, until one day an English-speaking voice answered the telephone and told me that he would put the Serpentine letter of invitation on Niemeyer’s desk. Little did I know that the architect’s team comprised of only two members, his personal assistant and Ricardo Antonio, who worked on his product design. On my arrival in Rio, Niemeyer began to design, drawing the first sketch during this initial meeting and so beginning the process of realising his extraordinary Pavilion through regular discussions and designs during our future meetings in Brazil.

PROGRAMMING ARCHITECTURESix months are devoted to researching and selecting the Serpentine Pavilion architect. During the first four months after the erection of the current Pavilion, we meet, make lists and research, and then approximately two further months are devoted to intense research, discussion and the selection of the architect prior to their letter of invitation. This is swiftly followed by an initial meeting to discuss the brief, the requirements of The Royal Parks, planning permission and so on. Following this, a precise process of close collaboration, meetings and dialogue between the architect, the lead engineer, who has been David Glover for a decade, and the Serpentine unfolds, with the presentation of designs from the architect, and the response by the Serpentine, which involves the testing of the architect’s proposals in terms of design, budget, engineering, planning permission, fire regulations and health and safety. At the core of the discussion is the Serpentine’s ambition to encourage the architects to conceive a structure that will go down in history, pressing them to extend their architectural language, whilst also encapsulating in their design the characteristics for which they are best known.

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As a public organisation whose mission is to engage and nurture the works of architects, artists and designers, the Serpentine is proud that the Pavilion programme has received recognition through awards and publications: the 2009 Pavilion by Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa (SANAA), for example, was mentioned in the firm’s citation for the 2010 Pritzker Architecture Prize, as was Toyo Ito’s Pavilion when he won the award in 2013. Fujimoto’s Pavilion was credited as contributing to his Marcus Prize of that year, and was the centrepiece of his presentation at the New York Museum of Modern Art’s current show, titled A Japanese Constellation. The Pavilions are also regularly represented in Philip Jodidio’s series of Taschen publications Architecture Now!

A LOOK TO THE FUTUREIt is very poignant that my architectural experiences at the Serpentine Gallery should have begun with Zaha Hadid and ended with her untimely death in March 2016, the same year I stepped down as Director of the Serpentine. Her proclamation that ‘there should be no end to experimentation’1 captures the energy and creativity of an architectural commission that, now in its sixteenth year, has maintained a steadfast vision throughout its unique history. A manifestation of the Serpentine’s desire to inform and educate the public, the commission continues to inspire and expand. As Beatriz Colomina writes:

Pavilion etymologically derives from papillon, the French word for butterfly. The sides of an open lightweight nomadic tent were associated with the wings of a butterfly. The pavilion, classically a royal tent in a park, is that which arrives, fluttering in from an unknown place, a pure image in flight, hovering for a moment, touching down and standing there with its image fully exposed, before fluttering away again, leaving everything changed in its wake.2

1 Handwritten sentence by Zaha Hadid on an Instagram post by Hans Ulrich Obrist as part of Obrist’s ongoing project to celebrate the free, handwritten word. Instagram post, 31 March 2016 [instagram.com/p/BDon-y1tlhx/]

2 Beatriz Colomina, ‘Paviljoni buducnosti = Pavilions of the future’, Oris, 9 (48) 2007, pp.16–17.

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32

Hans Ulrich Obrist in Conversation with Zaha Hadid

ZAHA HADIDEARLY PAINTINGS AND DRAWINGS

5Foreword

Hans Ulrich Obrist and Yana Peel

26P L A T E S

98P L A T E S

156Biographies

154The Hermitage remembers her and will never forget

Dr. Mikhail Piotrovsky

8Formalism and Formal Research

Patrik Schumacher

74On Painting, Drawing, and the Digital

145From Z to A and Zaha Again

Shumon Basar

84Lessons Learned from Fragmentation

17The Modernity of Zaha Hadid

Detlef Mertins

80On Mobile Architecture

150The Enduring Journey of Zaha Hadid

Etel Adnan

90The Russian Avant-Garde or Zaha Hadid’s influences

54

FOREWORD

I know from my experience that without research and experimentation not much can be discovered. With experimentation, you think you’re going to find out one thing, but you actually discover something else. That’s what I think is really exciting. You discover much more than you bargain for. I think there should be no end to experimentation. — Zaha Hadid

Zaha Hadid (1950 – 2016) was a pioneering and visionary architect and artist who left behind an extraordinary body of work. Her interests laid in the interface between architecture, landscape and geology, and her creative energy, as she stated herself, was put into the attempt to override nature’s principles of gravity and death. Since the beginning, Hadid used drawing and painting to visualise her radical ideas of dynamism; abstraction and fragmentation as tools to investigate and imagine her architectural projects. Her buildings, often characterised by their weightlessness and sense of floating, underscore her profound understanding of, and an attempt to reconstruct the early 20th century avant-garde and its utopian ideals.

We are honoured to have collaborated with Hadid on numerous occasions. Her extraordinary work – so far from all artistic and architectural conventions and norms of the time – was seen as controversial and it took her a while to receive the recognition she deserved. Her first structure in London was the inaugural Serpentine Pavilion in 2000, commissioned by Julia Peyton-Jones, which launched the Serpentine’s tradition of having a temporary structure built by an architect each year in Kensington Gardens. It was followed by the installation, Lilas, in 2007. In 2013, Hadid completed the dramatic extension for the Serpentine Sackler Gallery, one of Zaha Hadid Architects’ first permanent buildings in central London. She also participated in the Serpentine’s Interview Marathon in 2006 and the 89Plus Marathon in 2013.

Hadid’s Serpentine Sackler Gallery exhibition was first conceived with the artist before her passing and is issued from her conversations with Hans Ulrich Obrist, some of which are included in this volume. We feel extremely privileged to be able to present her rarely seen, early drawings and paintings influenced by Malevich, Tatlin, and Rodchenko. The selected works focus on the period preceding her first built architectural project, the Vitra Fire Station in Germany (1990 – 93), as well as her rarely seen sketchbooks. Taking inspiration from Constructivism, Suprematism and the Russian avant-garde, Hadid used abstraction as an investigative structure for her architectural proposals. These works on paper and canvas were developed as proposals submitted to competitions, as seen in her seminal work Malevich’s Tektonik (1976 – 77), Irish Prime Minister’s Residence (1979 – 80), Irish Prime Minister’s Residence (1979 – 80), Irish Prime Minister’s Residence The Peak (1982 – 83), or The World (89 degrees) (1983). This exhibition is conceived as Hadid’s manifesto of a utopian world, revealing her all-encompassing visions of arranging space and interpreting realities.

Hans Ulrich ObristArtistic Director

Yana PeelCEO

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It is a great pleasure to honour Zaha Hadid with this exhibition and catalogue, which, we hope, harness her memory. We are deeply grateful to Zaha Hadid’s family and to the Zaha Hadid Foundation for their commitment to this project. We are most thankful to Patrik Schumacher, Principal of Zaha Hadid Architects, for his dedication and to the studio’s Exhibitions team: Manon Janssens, Woody Yao, Daria Zolotareva, Henry Virgin, Zahra Yassine, and Jessika Green for their indispensable collaboration in the realisation of the show and this publication – which enabled us to create a beautiful and historical exhibition of the late visionary’s artistic œuvre. Thanks are also due to Lord Peter Palumbo, Brian Clarke and Joe Hage for their invaluable advice.

Many of Hadid’s paintings prefigure the potential of digital and the software required to render virtual reality. Technology and innovation have always been central to the work of Zaha Hadid Architects, and as their Director, Patrik Schumacher said: ‘It was Zaha Hadid who went first and furthest in exploring this way of innovating in architecture – without, as well as with the support of advanced software’. In light of this, a Virtual Reality (VR) project has been specially-developed in collaboration with Google Arts & Culture. We are grateful to Ben Vickers, Curator of Digital at the Serpentine Galleries for developing this ambitious technology together with the VR team at Zaha Hadid Architects: Helmut Kinzler, Jose Pareja-Gomez, Andy Lomas, Melodie Leung, Magda Smolinska and Aiste Dzikaraite; along with Amit Sood, Laurent Gaveau, Freya Murray and Suhair Khan at Google Arts & Culture.

This accompanying publication presents Hadid as an artist. It traces the development of her early career by exploring the processes, sketches and visions that eventually led to the creation of her signature buildings. We are enormously grateful to the book’s contributors for their insightful texts: artist, poet and writer Etel Adnan; writer and editor Shumon Basar; Dr. Mikhail Piotrovsky, Director of the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg and Patrik Schumacher, Director of Zaha Hadid Architects. This publication also includes includes a reproduction of a seminal essay by Detlef Mertins, The Modernity of Zaha Hadid, first published in 2006; as well as previously unpublished interviews between Hadid and the Serpentine Galleries’ Artistic Director, Hans Ulrich Obrist, which provide an insight into different aspects of Hadid’s ways of thinking.

There are a number of organisations and individuals whose help and involvement have been essential to this project. We are truly indebted to Nadja Swarovski and Swarovski for helping us realise this exhibition. We would also like to express our thanks to David Gill and Francis Sultana of David Gill Gallery for their support of the exhibition, as well as Sarah Arison and those donors who wish to remain anonymous. We are thankful to Bloomberg Philanthropies for partnering with us on Serpentine’s Digital Engagement Platform. Along with additional support from the Google Arts & Culture and YouTube, they enable us to widen the reach of our audiences. Our advisors AECOM and Weil offer their exceptional expertise to help us realise the ambitions of the artists we work with.

The Council of the Serpentine is an extraordinary group of individuals that provides ongoing and important assistance to enable the Serpentine to deliver its ambitious art, architecture, education and public programmes. We are also sincerely appreciative of the support from the Americas Foundation, the Learning Council, Patrons, Future Contemporaries and the Benefactors of the Serpentine Galleries.

The public funding that the Serpentine receives through Arts Council England provides an essential contribution towards all of the Galleries’ work and we remain very thankful for their continued commitment.

Finally, we would like to express our gratitude to the Serpentine team: Lizzie Carey-Thomas, Head of Programmes; Amira Gad, Exhibitions Curator; Agnes Gryczkowska, Assistant Curator; Mike Gaughan, Gallery Manager and Joel Bunn, Installation and Production Manager, who have worked closely with the wider Serpentine Galleries staff to realise this exhibition.

98

FORMALISM AND FORMAL RESEARCH

Patrik Schumacher

The formal architectural innovations of the 1980s and 1990s owe much to the early work of Zaha Hadid. Her radical inventions have been largely misunderstood and thus confined to the avant-garde. ‘Formalism’ and its derivative ‘Formalist’ (as noun or adjective) remain potent derogatory terms within architectural discourse. It is taken for granted that a creative investment in the elaboration of forms detracts from the concern for function. A moment’s reflection, however, reveals that all concern for a design’s functioning must be achieved by working on its form. My formula for this truism: Form Delivers Function. As I have argued in my comprehensive theory of architecture – the theory of architectural autopoiesis 1 – the distinction between form and function is the key distinction of architecture, whereby form is the discipline’s internal reference, i.e. our immediate responsibility, and function is the discipline’s external reference, i.e. our ultimate responsibility to society mediated via our production of forms. My theory further emphasises that the functionality with which designers (in contrast to engineers) should be concerned is social (rather than technical) functionality. In most general terms, the societal function of architecture and the design disciplines is the spatio-morphological ordering and framing of all social interaction processes.

Aggressive Formalism – A Productive Provocation

Since the designer’s immediate work is inevitably always concerned with forms, the charge of Formalism must be elaborated as follows: the ‘Formalist’ works on the form for the form’s sake, without regard to its function, concerned only with formal characteristics and matters of visual appearance. If this concern with formal characteristics is exclusive and entails the rejection of functional concerns, then this Formalist stance might be hard to defend. According to my theoretical reconstruction of the discipline’s rationality,2 architecture is operationally encoded by the double code of utility (functionality) and beauty (formal resolution) and a one-sided insistence on formal aspects only is indeed an anomaly. However, there have been protagonists within architecture who have explicitly taken this stance – most notably, Peter Eisenman and Jeff Kipnis. Eisenman’s notorious 1976 article ‘Post-functionalism’ argues that architecture lags behind abstract art and absolute music and must cast aside its concern with function to emancipate itself and become truly modern. In the early 1990s Kipnis turned the maledictum ‘Formalism’ into his primary positive headline slogan for his AA Graduate Design Group. His investment in formal research and innovation was also posited as exclusive, claiming to represent the discipline’s true essence. However, we should not allow ourselves to become distracted by the (ultimately questionable)

exclusiveness of these protagonists’ investments and ask instead if the attention to formal-compositional properties like symmetry, proportion, repetition, rhythm, syncopation, dynamic equilibrium and so on, makes sense and can be defended at all, and on which grounds.

Although we must certainly reject the proposition that an exclusive concern with formal characteristics is or should become the discipline’s true stance and calling, I will argue for the necessity of investing in formal research and innovation. This also entails the necessity of the elaboration of formal concepts and an attendant terminology for formal analysis. Kipnis, together with Greg Lynn – building on the work of prior protagonists like Robert Venturi, Colin Rowe, Peter Eisenman and Bernard Tschumi – have made a crucial contribution to both the innovation of our formal repertoires and to the elaboration of an attendant conceptual repertoire and terminology for tracking and guiding these formal innovations. Key concepts proposed by Kipnis and Lynn include, for example, ‘intensive coherence’ (Kipnis) and ‘multiple affiliation’ (Lynn). We might also add here Stan Allen’s concept of ‘field’. Key concepts from the earlier protagonists mentioned include ‘difficult whole’ (Venturi), ‘phenomenal transparency’ (Rowe), ‘space of becoming’ (Eisenman) and ‘super-imposition’ (Tschumi). All these protagonists and concepts have had their precursors: Giedion, Moholy, Kepes etc.

A Productive Division of Labour

My defence of this (largely American) Formalist tradition rests on the recognition that formal repertoires are ultimately functional problem-solving repertoires and that design choices benefit from an explicit reflection on formal possibilities. Therefore, formal research and innovation can be looked at as a partial contribution to the discipline’s problem-solving capacity and we can posit a division of labour between formal analysis and repertoire expansion on the one hand and the analysis of contemporary programmatic/functional requirements (with programme innovations) on the other hand, together enhancing the innovative, ultimately functionally oriented instrumentalisation of forms. My defence of Formalism even goes so far as to concede the rationality of an exclusive concentration on formal and formal-conceptual innovation as a useful (and probably necessary) aspect of an effective division of labour. The overall research effort aiming at innovative forms delivering innovative functional capacities must be divided and phased. Formal research should not always already be burdened with immediate functional concerns. Research should be modelled on the evolutionary dialectic of variation (mutation, recombination) and selection (testing). Variation must come first and should not be too tightly constrained by preconceived functionality criteria. Here resides the implicit rationality of the exclusiveness of the Formalists’ pursuit. Their rejection of function is ultimately false – and suicidal if generalised across the discipline, but it is an important stance that protects the crucial zone of formal research against overly impatient functionalists. I have therefore theorised the aggressively Formalist polemical positions of Eisenman and Kipnis as a ‘necessary false consciousness’. There is another aspect that feeds into the tendency of the disciplinary division of labour to become exclusive and overly myopic. Not everybody has a comprehensive set of talents, or commands the fully comprehensive

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range of intellectual resources to encompass the overall scope of the discipline’s task. Exclusive focus is therefore not only often a virtue but an inevitable limitation. This is viable, if the distributed collective effort covers the full scope of the task and some generalists step up and offer synthesis within a unified theory.

Two Analogies: Mathematics and Syntax

We should learn to respect our purely Formalist protagonists in analogy to the respect we grant to the protagonists of pure mathematics, some of whom might conceive of their field’s essence as indeed untethered from the mundane concerns of mathematics’ pragmatic utilisation. This myopic and ultimately indefensible self-conception might nevertheless be conducive towards mathematical creativity, which might eventually, via more pragmatically grounded colleagues, find its way into unexpected utilisations. Once more: Formal Repertoires ar e Problem-Solving Repertoires.

Another analogy that might be helpful here is the division of labour in linguistics between the subfields of syntax, semantics and pragmatics. There is no doubt that language evolution is ultimately pragmatically driven. It is equally beyond doubt that its communicative potency depends on the systemic intricacy of its formal structures, which are being investigated in the theory of syntax in abstraction from its semantic and pragmatic dimensions. Investment in formal research and architectural Formalism might thus be seen in analogy to the linguists’ research investment into syntactic structures.

Synthesis: Confronting the Formal Apparatus with a Catalogue of Functional Tasks

What is lacking in the Formalist tradition is the explicit attempt to confront the well-elaborated formal repertoire (together with its conceptual-terminological apparatus) with a relevantly abstracted descriptive apparatus elaborating the functional task domain. There have been no systematic attempts to map formal repertoires (solution-types) onto functional problem registers (problem-types). Within individual professional design projects, functional problems search for formal solutions and in academic design research projects the inverse procedure is often attempted: initially formalistically generated formal structures and possibilities are searching problem domains and tasks where they might be productively put to work. This is important and necessary. Both routes will lead to the sought-after new, productive form-function correlations that constitute the endgame of design and design research. However, this is intuitive design work without systematic reflection. A systematic theoretical confrontation and mapping would provide a useful guide to the search efforts in either direction. So far, however, the teaching of composition has remained isolated from any functional concerns. The division of labour has been too perfect, leading to hermetic specialist discourses and even sub-disciplines, taught in separate classes by separate professors, such as the teaching of architectural composition as purely formal

discipline. However, if we go back to the beginning of our discipline in the Renaissance we find clues about how compositional issues are instrumentally tied in with functional issues. From Alberti we learn how the composition of the city-form relates to the order of the polis and how the composition of the house relates to the social order of the household. From Palladio we learn how the rules of symmetry and proportion codify structural and environmental logics.

The only attempt to map a formal register systematically onto a catalogue of functional effects that I have come across so far is Alejandro Zaera-Polo’s attempt to correlate a formal classification of basic building forms with a set of functional micro-political effects in his article ‘The Politics of the Envelope’.3 My own account of a similar system of form-function correlations with respect to building forms and another attempt at correlating a typology of distinct city geometries with distinctive social ordering capacities or biases can be found in Volume 2 of my treatise The Autopoiesis of Architecture.4 However, these attempts only deliver a tentative beginning and signal the 4 However, these attempts only deliver a tentative beginning and signal the 4

possibility and importance of a task yet to be accomplished.

With respect to the ground-breaking formal innovations of the 1980s and 1990s alluded to above, I have been emphasising their functional rationality and historical pertinence for more than twenty years. ‘Superimposition’ (spatial overlap or interpenetration) lines up with the interpenetration of social domains like overlapping departmental responsibilities or interpenetrating domains of competency and interdisciplinary teams in contemporary corporate organisations. Continuously differentiated ‘field conditions’ with ‘gradients’ or ‘morphing trajectories’ align with increasing economies of scope and the proliferation of hybrid in-between conditions, as well as with the blurring of a corporation’s boundaries within collaborative networks and the blurring of departmental boundaries within corporations as becomes manifest in open, differentiated office landscapes. The concept of a ‘space of becoming’ relates to the condition of field transformations but also to the concept of ‘phenomenal transparency’, which aligns with the condition of multiple audiences with multiple perspectives and respectively divergent readings of the same space. The concept of ‘multiple affiliation’ aligns with the complexity of urban synergetic social and programmatic networks, where a particular functional offering relates to and ties in with multiple different complementary urban offerings and their users. These alignments of the new innovative set of formal tropes and compositional registers with new social-functional tendencies and requirements is crucial for the effective utilisation and thus validation of the formal research and innovations in question. The founding of the Design Research Laboratory (AADRL) at the Architectural Association School of Architecture in 1996 was explicitly geared towards this task of socio-functional validation of the recent formal innovations that had captured the imagination of the field at that time, while also continuing the formal research via new computational tools, albeit always guided by this sense of productive historical pertinence with respect to the socio-functional requirements and opportunities of the new era of post-Fordism.5

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The Functional Rationality of Zaha Hadid’s Radical Formal Innovations

What were the major expansionary moves that Zaha Hadid gifted to our discipline through her iconoclastic moves of the 1980s and 90s? We can identify and distinguish four wholly original and empowering ‘discoveries’: Explosion, Calligraphy, Distortion and Landscape. The design moves indicated by these concepts were so radical that they seemed utterly surreal or absurd at first. (This explains why nobody else had ever hit upon them before.) They are formal repertoire expansions, and thus might initially be viewed as artistic moves, and indeed they first showed up in Hadid’s often conceptual, rather obscure, seemingly abstract drawings and paintings. However, as stated, in the hands of a designing architect, a formal repertoire is always also a problem-solving repertoire, addressing the issues of spatial organisation and morphological articulation in the service of the prospective building’s social and technical functioning. So we need to grasp and discuss the new moves together with their empowering affordances – affordances that are indeed congenial to the requirements and desires of our time, and are thus potentially able to deliver momentous advantages. Of course, we should not expect these advantages to become fully manifest in the early explorations, but they have started to become manifest in our major mature works of recent years (and I argue that they promise further compelling manifestations):

Explosion: The surreal move to treat explosion as a compositional aspect. This soon reveals its power when a plan is no longer a closed and rigid array of nested boxes, but a centrifugal force-field that is eminently permeable, varied, yet ordered through the directed and progressive expansion of all fragments in relation to the implied point of origin. This dynamic and lawful fragmentation of the plan was a decisive step forward from the random, disordered fragmentation proposed by deconstructivism. However, the explosion delivers more order than just random fragmentation. It delivers a differentiated field where the fragments’ directionality points back to the shared origin and where the increasing spacing of fragments also indicates the relative position in the field.

Calligraphy: The surreal move of translating the dynamism of rapid calligraphic sketching literally (by hard-lining them with the use of an expansive range of ‘French curves’ or ‘ship curves’) into an architectural drawing that is then read as an intended geometry to be built, rather than treating the pulsing curvature of a rapid sketch as a rough accidental indication of an ideal geometric form meant to be rationalised into straight lines and arcs. Hadid’s intricately variegated curves offer more adaptive versatility to push into irregular sites or bulge to give room for internal requirements where needed. Further, as a function of the changing centrifugal force of the rapid acceleration and deceleration of the hand/pen, the curves and curvelinear compositions display coherent trajectories that we can recognise as legible figures, each with its own poise, dynamism or degree of fluidity. This increases legibility and navigability in the face of unavoidable programmatic diversity and complexity.

Distortion: The surreal move of using perspectival projection not to depict regular forms but to create and posit distorted forms. Hadid built up pictorial spaces within which multiple perspective constructions were fused into a seamless dynamic texture. One way to understand these images is as attempts to emulate the experience of moving through an architectural composition revealing a succession of different points of view. Another, more radical way of reading them is to abstract from the implied views and to read the distorted forms as a peculiar architectural world in its own right with its own characteristic forms, compositional laws and spatial effects. Usually these compositions are poly-central and multi-directional. All these features are the result of the use of multiple, interpenetrating perspective projections. Often the dynamic intensity of the overall field is increased by using curved instead of straight projection lines. The projective geometry allows us to bring an arbitrarily large and diverse set of elements under its cohering law of diminution and distortion. The resultant graphic space anticipates the later (and still very much current) concepts of fieldanticipates the later (and still very much current) concepts of fieldanticipates the later (and still very much current) concepts of and field and field swarm. The effect achieved is much like the effects later pursued with digitally simulated ‘gravitational fields’ that distort a mesh or grip, align, orient and thus integrate a set of elements or particles within the digital model.

Landscape: Instead of dissecting and ordering space by walls the landscape analogy suggests a continuously flowing space where transitions are soft, where zones are gradually differentiated and bleed into each other, where a smooth topographic ground relief rather than hard edges structure spatial relations. This opens up a whole new ontology of spatial and territorial definition, no longer premised on outline but on a modulated internal texture. We are talking of fields rather than spaces. In contrast to (empty) spaces, fields (like a forest) are filled with a modulated medium, i.e. structured via continuously differentiated field conditions and thus navigation can follow various vectors of gradual field transformation like density or directionality, rather than only orienting by tracking boundary crossings. Hadid’s painterly techniques like colour modulations, fading effects and Pointillist techniques also reinforce this new ontology of blurred boundaries and soft transitions, which is congenial to the contemporary social life and institutions where the formerly strict distinction of social classes and arenas are blurred and where domains of competency interpenetrate and bleed into each other.

Through these congenial and empowering repertoire expansions a new language of architecture with a much increased versatility (and thus problem solving capacity), and with a much richer, more expressive and more communicative repertoire of organisation and articulation (and thus ordering capacity) was born. The writings of the American Formalists (Kipnis, Lynn etc.) delivered a congenial terminology for the verbal articulation of our work. This explicit conceptual articulation is important as it focusses attention and directs the further innovative thrust. The relationship between theory and creative practice is a progressive dialectical back and forth rather than a hierarchical sequence.

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From Composition to Communication: Organisation, Articulation, Signification

The general insight that formal repertoires are problem-solving repertoires is valid with respect to the problem domains of both technical and social functionality. The dimension of social functionality poses three distinct task dimensions: organisation, articulation and signification, as elaborated in my theory of architectural autopoiesis.6

Organisation is concerned with functional layout: the spatial distribution of programme domains dealing with physical distances, adjacencies and connections. The traditional term ‘composition’ entails this organisational effort. However, composition has always implied more than mere adjacency arrangements. It was and is understood as an ‘artistic’ effort regulated by aesthetic criteria, i.e. it is concerned with the visual appearance of a spatial arrangement. I am putting the phrase artistic in quotation marks here because I am distinguishing design sharply from art and insist – also with respect to composition – that the design effort (in distinction to contemporary art) is ultimately always instrumental according to pragmatic criteria. We must grasp the instrumentality of visual appearance. Mere organisation is not enough to secure the ordering of social processes (social functionality). A building functions only if its organisation is legible and navigable to its users. Adjacencies, connections and programmatic designations work only if they are recognised. In complex urban scenes and arrangements this is not trivial. Users must be able to perceptually decompose the scene into units of interaction. They need to recognise what belongs and works together. This is facilitated by composition in the second, ‘artistic’ sense. It is the attempt to articulate the spatial organisation into a perceptually tractable scene, to ascertain that the massing emphasises the functional hierarchy of elements and their relation, that it remains legible from different perspectives, that important features like primary entrances become conspicuous etc. For instance, the concern that a composition should be balanced, positing dynamic equilibrium as formal-compositional value, entails the effort to unify an asymmetric arrangement (like the Dessau Bauhaus) by allowing us to locate a ‘centre of gravity’ around which an asymmetric ensemble can unify into a figure, rather than falling apart or disappearing into an amorphous background context. Composition in this sense is about the visual clarification of significant functional relations. This task demands that the forms we select are not only chosen according to their physical functioning, but also with respect to their visual functioning, i.e. we must orchestrate the formal problem-solving choices according to the criteria of overall articulation. This implies that we must bring all functional features under a ruthless project-specific formal-compositional system or formal regime. We must try to turn structurally necessary features into characterising features or else suppress them (lest they distract), while we accentuate features that must be easily recognisable for the smooth social functioning of the building. The imposition of a formal regime for the sake of the design’s communicative capacity does not have to interfere with the physical functioning of the design.

The technical and formal choices available today are rich enough to allow for two sets of criteria to be at play in constraining the selection of functioning forms. An expanded repertoire makes this easier. In my theory, this visual aspect of the task of composition is termed ‘phenomenological articulation’ and in order to clarify this dimension I distinguish the ‘phenomenological project’ from the ‘organisational project’.

The architectural project further comprises the semiological project, which further articulates the design with respect to social communications beyond the mere identification of figures and their relations. The task of semiological articulation (signification) leads us beyond the scope of the compositional stance and demands that the design of a building (or complex of buildings) is conceived as the design of a system of signification positing information-rich visual communication. Once more this semiological project – just like the organisational and the phenomenological project – must resort to forms. To what else could it resort? And once more we must construct and impose a rich formal system or formal regime to deliver this project. Again, with a third set of constraining criteria at play, the expanse and richness of the underlying formal repertoire is a crucial factor for the project’s chances of success. In this context it is important to remind ourselves of the evident fact that parametricism offers a much richer and more versatile formal repertoire than all the prior styles put together.

The built environment’s social functionality resides in its communicative capacity. The elaboration of spatial complexes as systems-of-signification is the key to upgrading architecture’s core competency. The semiological project implies that the design project systematises all form-function correlations into a coherent system of signification, designed as a network of similitudes and contrasts, organised via a spatio-visual grammar. On the basis of the formal research and repertoire of parametricism, the design of semiological systems-of-significations with a much enhanced information-richness and communicative capacity becomes possible.7

1 Patrik Schumacher, The Autopoiesis of Architecture, Vol. 1, ‘A New Framework for Architecture’ (London: John Wiley & ‘A New Framework for Architecture’ (London: John Wiley & ‘A New Framework for Architecture’Sons, 2010).

2 Ibid.

3 Alejandro Zaera-Polo, ‘The Politics of the Envelope – A Political Critique of Materialism’, Volume #17, (Amsterdam: Stichting Archis, October 2008) pp. 77 – 105.

4 Patrik Schumacher, The Autopoiesis of Architecture, Vol. 2, ‘A New Agenda for Architecture’, 6.1.5 Problem-types vs Solution-types.

5 See the author’s publications from this time: Patrik Schumacher, ‘Productive Patterns’, Operativity, vol. 135–136 (Slovenia, June 1997), and architect’s bulletin, vol. 137–138 (Slovenia, November 1997); Patrik Schumacher, ‘Produktive Ordnungen’, in ARCH+ 136, Your Office Is Where You Are(Berlin, 1997); Patrik Schumacher, ‘Business – Research – Architecture’, DAIDALOS Architecture-Art-Culture, #69/70 (Daidalos, December 1998 / January 1999). Deutsche

Ausgabe: Wirtschaft Forschung Architektur, 1999; Patrik Schumacher, ‘The AA Design Research Lab – Premises, Agenda, Methods’, paper delivered at Conference: Research and Practise in Architecture, Alvar Aalto Academy, published in E. Laksonen, T. Simons, A. Vartola (ed), Research and Practise in Architecture, Building Information Ltd., 2000.

6 Patrik Schumacher, The Autopoiesis of Architecture, Vol. 2, ‘Order via Organisation and Articulation’, 6.2 Order via Organisation and Articulation.

7 Patrik Schumacher, ‘Advancing Social Functionality via Agent Based Parametric Semiology’, in H. Castle (ed.), AD Parametricism 2.0 – Rethinking Architecture’s Agenda for the 21st Century, guest-edited by Patrik Schumacher, AD Profile #240, March/April 2016; Patrik Schumacher, ‘Parametric Semiology – The Design of Information Rich Environments’, in Pablo Lorenzo-Eiroa and Aaron Sprecher (ed.), Architecture In Formation – On the Nature of Information in Digital Architecture (New York: Routledge, Taylor and in Digital Architecture (New York: Routledge, Taylor and in Digital ArchitectureFrancis, 2013).

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THE MODERNITY OF ZAHA HADID

Detlef Mertins

During the heyday of Post-Modernism in the 1980s, as architects turned to historical styles, urban traditions, and popular culture to rebuild the public support that Modernism had lost, Zaha Hadid declared that modernity was an incomplete project that deserved to be continued. This was an inspiring message, and its bold vision was matched by projects such as the competition-winning design for The Peak in Hong Kong (1982–83). Hadid’s luminous paintings depicted the city and the hillside above it as a prismatic field in which buildings and landform were amalgamated into the same geological formation of shifting lines, vibrant planes, and shimmering colours, at once tangible and intangible, infused with the transformative energy that Cubist, Futurist, and Expressionist landscapes had sought to capture. The figure of her building – a hotel — was barely discernible within this field. It was composed of three long prismatic bars — overlapping, rotating, and sliding above one another, as if detaching themselves from the earth or, alternatively, landing from outer space, anchored by vertical staffs, hovering momentarily on terraces cut into the hillside. These images sent ripples of excitement through the architectural world, evidence that Modernism was not a dirty word after all. It was alive, larger than life, and totally seductive.

Hadid’s was a different modernism than we had become accustomed to, no longer utilitarian, blandly corporate, or aggrandising of technology. Her vision of Hong Kong offered a powerful wish image, at once futuristic and archaic, geometric and geomorphic. Hadid had tapped into the largely forgotten vein of Russian Constructivism and infused its revolutionary heroics with cosmopolitan urbanity. She rekindled the flame of modernity with this new cocktail of desires.

The word ‘Constructivism’ came into usage in the early 1920s, in art most notably with the Working Group of Constructivists formed in Moscow in 1921, of whom Alexander Rodchenko and Varvava Stepanova became the best known.1 Yet the term has often been associated with the work of Vladimir Tatlin, whose reliefs, beginning already in 1913, launched a sustained but also diverse field of experimentation into new non-representational modalities of artistic production, for which ‘Constructivism’ has served as an umbrella concept.2 In the field of architecture, the term was initially associated with the Union of Contemporary Architects, including Moisei Ginzburg and Alexander Vesnin, as well as others such as Konstantin Melnikov. During the late 1920s, a younger generation appeared on the scene, including Ivan Leonidov, whose work on new building and urban types employed the visual language of elemental geometry in a more extreme way than architects had before. At the same time, Yakov Chernikhov demonstrated through his teaching that an abstract, graphic (rather than painterly) language of lines, planes, volumes, and colour could be employed to generate an extraordinary diversity of things, from machines to engineering works, buildings, and cities.3

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Though initiated prior to 1917, these lines of research in art and architecture became aligned with the Russian Revolution’s radical politics and served as instruments for the reorganisation of life after the overthrow of the tsar. Art was enlisted to create festivals in the street, propaganda on railway cars, and didactic programming in theaters and cinemas. Working at times in parallel with the artists and at times independently, Constructivist architects devised new building types that would be commensurate with the forms of social organisation desired in the new Communist state. From apartments to social clubs, theatres and stadiums, they reconceptualised buildings as social condensers, catalysts for new forms of collective living. During the early 1920s, these various trajectories coalesced into the challenge of defining a new paradigm that would unite art and life and transform the world into a new artistic reality.

With their project Exodus, or The Voluntary Prisoners of Architecture (1972), Rem Koolhaas Exodus, or The Voluntary Prisoners of Architecture (1972), Rem Koolhaas Exodus, or The Voluntary Prisoners of Architectureand Elia Zenghelis with Madelon Vriesendorp and Zoe Zenghelis had already revisited Russian Constructivism at the Architectural Association in London, where Hadid would soon emerge as Koolhaas and Zenghelis’s most talented student.4 This project looked 4 This project looked 4

to Leonidov’s proposal for a linear infrastructural city of 1930 in attempting to develop an alternative to ‘the behavioural sink of a city like London.’ 5 Seeking to operate at the scale of metropolitan reconstruction, the group turned to Constructivism to strike a path between the legacy of CIAM (Congrès Internationaux d’Architecture Moderne), on the one hand, and the more recent artistic urban visions of Superstudio’s Continuous Monument (1969), Archizoom’s Monument (1969), Archizoom’s Monument No-Stop-City (1969 – 72), Archigram’s Plug-In City (1962 – 64), Yona Friedman’s Spatial City (1958 – 59), and Constant’s New Babylon (1956 –). For Koolhaas, the work of Leonidov became a strategic ingredient in an explosive, ironic mixture that also included the raw vitality of the enclave-city of West Berlin, fantasies of decadence in early 20th-century Manhattan, Surrealist juxtapositions of incongruous fragments, and the typological delirium of O.M.Ungers.

It was in this context that Hadid rediscovered the Suprematist and Constructivist precursors to the Utopian artist-architects of the 1960s, turning specifically to Kazimir Malevich to find her own way of dreaming the future by deliberately tapping into experiments left incomplete. Where Tatlin and the later Constructivists abandoned the medium of painting in favour of materially based reliefs, assemblages, spatial constructions, stage sets, and even architecture — all of which already occupied the same world as the observer — Malevich launched a ‘new painterly realism’ in 1915, called it Suprematism, and declared it the key to transforming the world.6 His display of over twenty canvases — with Black Square (1915) hung in a corner — at Black Square (1915) hung in a corner — at Black Square The Last Futurist Exhibition of Paintings:“0.10” in Petrograd (1915) served to demonstrate both the deductive rigour and of Paintings:“0.10” in Petrograd (1915) served to demonstrate both the deductive rigour and of Paintings:“0.10”generative potential of what he considered a new system of pure painting. Its systemic character lay in the permutation of elemental shapes in black, white, and red — beginning with the square, then the circle, cross, rectangle, trapezium, triangle, ellipse, and combinations of all these. Through the show, Malevich attracted students who joined him in developing Suprematism over the following years, and the style soon incorporated greater diversity, movement, and expression.

Architect Peter Cook once observed that ‘Malevich’s Architekton is constantly being erected as the baseline for Zaha’s own work.’ 7 Certainly, presentations of Hadid’s œuvre 7 Certainly, presentations of Hadid’s œuvre 7

often, and with biographical inevitability, begin with her graduation project from the Architecture Association — Malevich’s Tektonik of 1976 – 77 — for which she transformed Malevich’s assemblage of elemental blocks into a hotel on the Hungerford Bridge over the Thames in London. But what kind of origin was this and what kind of repetition did it involve?

Where Malevich considered his Black Square of 1915 as the founding origin of Black Square of 1915 as the founding origin of Black SquareSuprematism, the irreducible ‘degree zero’ of painting and seed germ of an entire artistic system, Hadid took up the trajectory of Suprematism already well into its evolution. After five years of developing Suprematism in painting, Malevich and his followers moved from two into three dimensions, from painting into architecture, decorative arts, and even urbanism.8 More precisely, this constituted a return since it was in his stage sets for the Futurist play Victory over the Sun (1913) that he had first discovered the black square. He cast his Architekton series in white plaster, each one different, first horizontal and later vertical, and displayed them together in a black room, as if they were creations ex nihilo, floating in the nothingness of space. He even called them satellites and planets. In contrast, Hadid began with an act of appropriation more reminiscent of Marcel Duchamp’s Bicycle Wheel of 1913 than Malevich’s elementarism. She brought Bicycle Wheel of 1913 than Malevich’s elementarism. She brought Bicycle WheelMalevich’s Alpha Architekton (1920) down to earth, anchored it to the Hungerford Bridge, and opened it for business as a hotel. Somewhat too short to span the entire width of the river, somewhat too wide to be contained by the existing bridge, it remained alien and contingent in its new context.

In presenting her project as a painting (rather than as a maquette), Hadid folded Malevich’s Suprematist architecture back onto its origins in painting and in the process scrambled the definitions of both mediums. Where Malevich eschewed representation, Hadid’s paintings must be considered representational, though not in a naturalistic sense, since what they depict are potential architectures, not physical realities. They represent her vision of an abstract architecture, or in Malevich’s terms, a non-objective reality. Moreover, she sets her projects into specific urban contexts that she portrays abstractly as Suprematist landscapes and cities. Since Suprematism itself did not produce such interpretative abstractions, it is necessary to turn to the paintings of landscapes and cities in Cubism, Futurism, and Expressionism (including Malevich’s own) to discern the implications of Hadid’s operation. Drawing on Cubist decompositions of landscapes into prismatic fields, Futurist expressions of dynamic energies, and Expressionist renderings of psychic experience, Hadid transformed Suprematism from an art of building complex structures out of elemental geometric shapes into one that seeks to make visible the elemental nature inherent in the world. Where Malevich declared in 1920 that the forms of Suprematism ‘have nothing in common with the technology of the earth’s surface,’ 9

Hadid’s paintings bring mathematical and geological geometries into greater alignment.

Hadid created Suprematist paintings of Suprematist buildings in Suprematist landscapes and cities, using architectural drawings — plans, sections, and isometrics — in place of pure geometric figures. The plan of the Architekton-hotel appears several times in different places on the canvas, in solid red and black and in compositions of mixed colours, so that it is transformed into a series of abstract shapes floating in space. In the bottom left corner, the building is decomposed into its constituent planes of colour, bringing the

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painting even closer to Malevich. Rather than reinforcing the volumetric integrity of the various blocks that make up the Architekton, Hadid’s application of colour decomposes its masses into planes, much as Theo van Doesburg had done for his Maison Particulière project of 1923. Where Modernists such as Malevich sought an origin, or ground, for their work in the autonomous properties of different mediums, Hadid’s painting of Suprematist buildings envisions the building of Suprematist paintings.

With such a beginning — a beginning that denies, but then compounds, folds, and twists the Modernist idea of origins — we could say that Hadid took seriously Malevich’s statement that Suprematism was itself merely the beginning of a new art and that he was merely its initial theoretician.10 Or we could also say that she gave Malevich a ‘monstrous child,’ to borrow the image that Gilles Deleuze gave in describing the relationship of his books to those of philosophers with whom he was in dialogue, such as Bergson, Leibniz, and Spinoza.11 In ‘Mediators,’ an essay from 1985, Deleuze took issue with the return at that time of the Modernist problem of origins and insisted instead that creativity was mediated: ‘Mediators are fundamental. Creation is all about mediators. Without them, nothing happens. They can be people . . . but things as well, even plants or animals . . . Whether they’re real or imaginary, animate or inanimate, one must form one’s mediators. It’s a series: if you don’t belong to a series, even a completely imaginary one, you’re lost.’ 12

Deleuze suggested that, in fact, a change of paradigm was underway, exemplified by the shift in cultural preference from sports of energetic movement, such as running and throwing a javelin, which presume starting points, leverage, effort, and resistance, to sports such as surfing, windsurfing, and hang gliding, which ‘take the form of entry into an existing wave.’ 13

In employing Malevich as mediator, Hadid entered into an existing wave, one that had already gone beyond Malevich and his pursuit of origins, although Malevich remained a presence in it, as did ideas of new beginnings, first principles, and universal elements. Through interlocutors, such as Wassily Kandinsky, revisionist students such as El Lissitzky, and more distant admirers such as László Moholy-Nagy, Suprematism had already become a broader, more diverse movement, which explored the potential of new mediums and technologies for creating an abstract landscape of dynamic forms and fluid spaces. When Hadid joined the wave, she inflected it further to include conceptual explorations of language, generative process, totality, and openness. Treating each project as an experiment in the laboratory of new beginnings, she replayed the Modernist return to origins but without its fundamentalism or teleology.

In translating figures and patterns from two to three dimensions, Hadid qualified the quest for a universal architectonic language by exploiting the diverse formal experiments already undertaken in Suprematist and other abstract painting. Where Malevich had restricted his architecture to the primary language of prismatic blocks, Hadid used each new project to explore the potential of another formal variant developed in painting. Consider, for example, the differences between The World (89 Degrees) (1983), A New Barcelona (1989), London 2066 (1991), London 2066 (1991), London 2066 Vision for Madrid (1992), the Victoria & Albert Museum, Vision for Madrid (1992), the Victoria & Albert Museum, Vision for MadridBoilerhouse Extension (London, 1996), the New Campus Center, Illinois Institute of Technology (Chicago, 1997 – 98), and Boulevard der Stars (Berlin, 2004). Today, Hadid’s work is at times angular and prismatic (Car Park and Terminus Hoenheim-Nord,

Strasbourg, France, 1998 – 2001), at other times rectilinear (Lois and Richard Rosenthal Center for Contemporary Art, Cincinnati, 1997 – 2003), sinuous (MAXXI National Centre of Contemporary Arts, Rome, 1997 – 2010), geomorphic (Ordrupgaard Museum Extension, Denmark, 2001 – 05), plastic (Ice-Storm at MAK, Vienna, 2003), and mixed (BMW Plant Central Building, Leipzig, Germany, 2001 – 05). While these buildings, and even such formally hybrid ones as the Phaeno Science Center in Wolfsburg, Germany (1999 – 2005) — which is part curvilinear, part angular, part distorted rectangles — draw on Modernist research into the possibility of a universal language, they also imply that the language of architecture today is more inclusive, mutable, and personal than it was in the past. Hadid continually distorts, morphs, stretches, and stresses the forms she employs — animating them with energy, direction, variability, and speed.

As opportunities for building her visions gradually arose, Hadid found for architecture the equivalent of the material and sensuous qualities of Suprematist painting — the effects of Malevich’s handling of pigment, techniques of fading, and combining of colours. Beginning with the Vitra Fire Station, Weil am Rhein, Germany (1990 – 94), she has looked to concrete for its formal malleability, structural flexibility, and expressive capacity. Echoing the monumental plasticity of concrete buildings at mid-century by Marcel Breuer, Oscar Niemeyer, and Eero Saarinen, Hadid has often foregone tectonic expression and used concrete to emphasise form and surface, defy gravity, and evade regularity. For furniture and interiors, she often works in fiberglass and plastic for similar reasons and to similar effect. She prefers to mold and cast than to construct and assemble.

Hadid’s way of working married the generative permutations of Suprematism with the step-by-step generative design method devised by Ginzburg and other Constructivist architects. Ginzburg’s ‘functional method’ began with the abstract diagramming of given functional requirements and their potential to change over time, and then turned to new industrial materials and methods of construction to ‘crystallise the social condenser.’ 14

The resultant spatial form could then be assessed and refined for its ability to ‘organise perception,’ since it was understood to be active with respect to the inhabitant rather than passive. By combining generative processes from art and design, Hadid effectively discharged the residual metaphysics of form that limited Malevich. She absorbed his Formalism into an ever-expanding repertoire of form-generating techniques — the explosion of matter in space, the bundling of lines and ribbons, the organising of fields, aggregations, pixelation and the the warping, bending, twisting, and melting of forms — and put these to work in reorganising life.

Over the course of her career, Hadid developed a distinctive calligraphic mode of sketching with which she begins her projects. While her lines at times recall those of Kandinsky or Chernikov, they are more spontaneous and probing. Where Erich Mendelsohn’s fluid ink sketches inaugurated the massing and profile of buildings such as his Einstein Tower near Potsdam, Germany (1919 – 21), Hadid’s lines explore possible organisations that can gradually be developed into plans, sections, and three-dimensional forms. Likewise, her drawings should not be confused with expressive sketches that seek to manifest the unconscious psyche, such as Coop Himmelblau’s drawing with eyes closed for their Open House of 1983 (Malibu, California). Rather, Hadid’s drawings capture and reveal the intangible forces, flows, and rhythms already at play in the sites that she is to

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develop and the building briefs that she is given. Like her paintings of urban sites, they speculate from external givens. Most recently she has refined this kind of diagramming through computer modeling, which is capable of handling vast amounts of information as well as producing complex and mutating geometries. By linking the analytical and generative uses of computing, Hadid demonstrates how powerful a tool it can be for designers eager to participate productively in the evolution of physical environments always and already in motion.

Hadid insists, like Malevich, on seeing art and architecture as a totality, but figures it more concretely as the urbanisation of the planet. Her conception of the whole is dynamic, indeterminate, and emergent, rather than static and resolved. In this, she clarifies something that Malevich himself struggled with. His world view was theological and transcendental, yet he sought to account for the evolution of art as part of human history.15 He explained Cubism, Futurism, and Suprematism as adding elements to art from the outside, from the world of modern technology and experience. At first the audience, he recalled, was shocked and dismayed by such abnormalities, but then came to accept them, thereby expanding the horizon of perception, and of the perceptible as such.16 He considered individual works to be ‘constructions’ that pushed beyond the closed system of art, which was merely ‘on its way’ towards a future system. Later, after Stalin rejected Modern art in favor of Socialist Realism, Malevich painted abstract depictions of peasant life, which he still considered to be Suprematist, suggesting just how much he believed Suprematism to be historically contingent. Hadid extended this contingency into the 21st century and understands the relationships of part and whole, one and many, past and future, as immanent. The whole is given but elusive. It does not need to be produced through human works, although they participate in its ongoing metamorphosis. For Hadid, the special contribution that an architecture of form — abstract and dynamic — can make is to stand in for that totality, which eludes every effort, every model, and every allegory that seeks to represent it, in science as in philosophy, theology, and art.

Like Piet Mondrian and Van Doesburg, Malevich believed in a hierarchical relationship between art and utility. He was indifferent to function, even when it came to architecture. But Malevich spoke of his art producing psychological affects, expressing things like the ‘sensation of flight,’ the ‘sensation of metallic sounds,’ the ‘feeling of wireless telegraphy,’ and ‘magnetic attraction.’ 17 In expressing such sensations, he brought the experience 17 In expressing such sensations, he brought the experience 17

of modern technology into art abstractly, without overt representation. He provided an opportunity for the observer to re-experience these feelings directly through perception, which he held to be more capable than the conscious mind of accessing the absolute. As a result, his images are profoundly ambiguous, open to interpretation but also misinterpretation. They have the poetic character of an open work, which, as Umberto Eco has described, rejects definitive and concluded messages and, instead, multiplies possibilities and encourages acts of conscious freedom.18

While Malevich gave priority to form over function and material, he recognised that forms could have applications and utility in quotidian life as teapots, decorated china, textile patterns, clothing, and buildings. While his overly geometrised work in these realms was far from convincing, he suggested in his writings a provocative way to

rethink the question of use, which was informed by his expressive conception of art: ‘a chair, bed, and table are not matters of utility but rather, the forms taken by plastic sensations . . . [T]he sensations of sitting, standing, or running are, first and foremost, plastic sensations and they are responsible for the development of corresponding “objects of use” and largely determine their form . . . We are never in a position for recognising any real utility in things and . . . shall never succeed in constructing a really practical object. We can evidently only feel the essence of absolute utility but, since a feeling is always non-objective, any attempt to grasp the utility of the objective is utopian.’ 19 We are accustomed to objects such as furniture having determined and codified uses, when in fact they can be used in different and unexpected ways. This openness is something that Hadid has pursued in her interiors, from the furniture for her own apartment (originally made for 24 Cathcart Road, London, 1985 – 86) to her Z-Scape furniture, Iceberg sofa/lounger, and Ice-Storm domestic landscape, which beckons one to lie on it, lean on it, climb on it, slide on it, crawl through it, and eat on it, alone or with others.

Certainly the uses of buildings change over time, often radically and unpredictably. In the 1920s, Mies van der Rohe criticised a friend, the organicist functionalist Hugo Haering, for seeking too tight a fit between form and function — optimising form for only one function when spaces often need to serve many at once and when uses change more rapidly than buildings can. Hadid’s buildings, like her furniture, are bigger than their functions, multivalent and multifunctional. They are the infrastructure and support for unexpected events and emergent ways of living as well as programmed scripts. They tease and enable their inhabitants to experiment with other ways of doing things. The subjects of her buildings are both generators of forms and participants in the life and completion of the work over time. It is this combination of attentiveness and openness that defines Hadid’s social vision.

Indebted to the catalytic ambitions of Suprematist art and Constructivist architecture, Hadid’s modernity is fully self-reflexive, aware not only of its devices and the contingency of its dreams, but also the risks it takes. In a world of instability, contrariness, uncertainty, and deception, she produces an architecture that embraces flux and polyvalent mixtures. Urbane, daring, and exuberant, her œuvre supports a vision of life as an art — lived intensely and expansively, with imagination and style. Like life itself, Hadid’s modernity is constitutively unfinished and always surprising.

Detlef Mertins, The Modernity of Zaha Hadid was originally The Modernity of Zaha Hadid was originally The Modernity of Zaha Hadidpublished in Zaha Hadid © 2006 The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York. Used by permission.

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1 See Maria Gough, The Artist as Producer: Russian Constructivism in Revolution (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005).

2 The term ‘Constructivism’ has also served to subsume diverse formal experiments within the careers of its major figures, such as Naum Gabo, El Lissitzky, László Moholy-Nagy, and Antoine Pevsner.

3 See Catherine Cooke, Russian Avant-Garde Theories of Art, Architecture, and the City (London: Academy Editions, 1995); and The Great Utopia: The Russian and Soviet Avant-Garde, 1915 – 32, exh. cat. (New York: Guggenheim Museum, 1992).

4 By the 1960s, London had already become a major locus of interest in Constructivism among historians, critics, curators, artists, and architects.

5 Martin van Schaik and Otakar Macel, eds., Exit Utopia: Architectural Provocations 1956 – 76 (Munich: Prestel, 2005), Architectural Provocations 1956 – 76 (Munich: Prestel, 2005), Architectural Provocations 1956 – 76p. 238.

6 Malevich called this new art ‘Suprematism’ after the Latin word ‘supremus’, which connotes ‘the highest’, ‘absolute’, ‘excellent’, and ‘ruling’. See Larissa A. Zhadova, Malevich: Suprematism and Revolution in Russian Art 1910 – 1930 (London: Thames & Hudson, 1982); Kazimir Malevich 1878 – 1935, exh. cat. (Los Angeles: Armand Hammer Museum of Art, 1990); and Matthew Drutt, Kazimir Malevich: Suprematism, exh. cat. (Berlin: Deutsche Guggenheim, 2003). See also Malevich’s The Non-Objective World, trans. Howard Dearstyne (Chicago: Paul Theobald & Co., 1959).

7 Peter Cook, ‘The Emergence of Zaha Hadid’, in Zaha Hadid: Texts and References (New York: Rizzoli, 2004), p. 11. For insightful considerations of the relationship between Hadid and Malevich, see Kenneth Frampton, ‘A Kufic Suprematist: The World Culture of Zaha Hadid’, in Zaha Hadid: Planetary Architecture Two (London: Architectural Association, 1983); and Gordana Fontana-Giusti, ‘A Forming Element’, in Zaha Hadid: Texts and References, pp. 18 – 39.

8 Malevich encapsulated what he called ‘the formula of three-dimensional spatial Suprematism’ as a black, red, and white cube, and prepared sketches of Architektons in colour. See Zhadova, Malevich, p. 62, n. 71. See also Malevich’s Table No. 3 Spatial Suprematism (ca. 1920s), which is illustrated in Kazimir Malevich 1878 – 1935, p. 151.

9 Kazimir Malevich, ‘Suprematism. 34 Drawings, 1920’, in Zhadova, Malevich, p. 284.

10 See Zhadova, Malevich, p. 60.

11 Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam cite Deleuze saying, ‘I imagined myself getting onto the back of an author, and giving him a child, which would be his and which would at the same time be a monster. It was very important that it should be his child, because the author actually had to say everything that I made him say. But it also had to be a monster because it was necessary to go through all kinds of decenterings, slips, break-ins, secret emissions, which I really enjoyed.’ See Tomlinson and Habberjam, ‘Translator’s Introduction’, in Gilles Deleuze, Bergsonism (New York: Zone Books, 1991), p. 8.

12 Gilles Deleuze, ‘Mediators’, trans. Martin Joughin, in Zone 6: Incorporations, ed. Jonathan Crary and Sanford Kwinter (New York: Zone Books, 1992), pp. 281 – 93.

13 Ibid., p. 281. Deleuze continues, ‘There is no longer any origin as starting point, but a sort of putting-into-orbit. The basic thing is how to get taken up in the movement of a big wave, a column of rising air, to ‘come between’ rather than to be the origin of an effort.’

14 Moisei Ginzburg, ‘New Methods of Architectural Thought’, in Cooke, Russian Avant-Garde, pp. 129 – 30. See also Cooke’s chapter 5, ‘Constructivism: From Tatlin and Rodchenko to a ‘Functional Method’ for Building Design’, pp. 99 – 121.

15 Malevich considered Suprematism to be his personal interpretation of creation, referred to himself as a Messiah, and described the Black Square as the ‘image of God as the Black Square as the ‘image of God as the Black Squareessence of His perfection on a new path for today’s fresh beginning.’ See Malevich, letter to Mikhail Gershenzon, March 20, 1920, which is cited and translated in Yevgenia Petrova, ‘Malevich’s Suprematism and Religion’, in Drutt, Kazimir Malevich, p. 91. Petrova points out that in Russian icons, ‘a white background traditionally symbolises purity, sanctity, and eternity, while black represents the chasm, hell, and darkness’ (p. 91).

16 See Malevich, The Non-Objective World, p. 14.

17 See ibid., pp. 81 – 83, 87. These phrases are in the titles of his works.

18 See Umberto Eco, The Open Work, trans. Anna Cancogni (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1989).

19 Malevich, The Non-Objective World, p. 98.

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HANS ULRICH OBRIST IN CONVERSATION WITH

ZAHA HADID

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HANS ULRICH OBRIST I would like to talk to you about the early work you did, which involved a river crossing at the the Architectural Association School of Architecture (AA) in London.

ZAHA HADID I was a senior at the AA – this was in my fifth year there, it was 1977. I was in the class of Rem Koolhaas and Elia Zenghelis. I titled my graduation project Malevich’s Tektonik (1976 – 77); it was a hotel sitting on, or hanging from, Hungerford Bridge. It was a brief for the 19th century Charing Cross station. Across the bridge, on the other side of the river were some examples of 20th-century-style experimental architecture: the National Theatre, the Royal Festival Hall, the Hayward Gallery. So the idea of the bridge was to start from the 20th century and try and make it to the 21st century. Of course I was very influenced by the Russian avant-garde at that time. This influence has been present since the very beginning of my work. A lot of ideas, like horizontal elevation, and my working methods, were established with that project, because the residue of the new superimposition left traces on the underground, on the trams, or on the tracks.

HUO I also think of some of your very important projects such as the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, the Kunsthaus Graz, the Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec, where many inventive things have been done in the architectural design. They are all very fluid buildings that were ahead of their respective times, and that’s why they lost competitions because they were somehow anticipating many of the things that are now being built. Can you tell us something about these projects, about this invention of fluidity?

ZH I think they are different from later fluid work I have done, because they still have traces of things that were done by sight, under the idea of fluid morphology. I think then, many, many years ago, people didn’t believe it was possible to achieve the fantastic. A new sense of reality had not taken off yet. They were site specific, they were part of that generation of projects that were quite delicate and elegant, with a certain degree of robustness at the same time.

HUO Architect Patrik Schumacher has written an incredible book, Digital Hadid: Landscape in Motion (2003). And this leads us directly to the next question. Very often when I speak to young architects, emerging architects, they say your work has inspired them because of this digital dimension. Patrik, what can you tell us about Digital Hadid?

ON PAINTING , DRAWING ,

AND THE DIGITAL

S E R P E N T I N E G A L L E R Y, L O N D O N , 2 0 0 6 PATRIK SCHUMACHER It follows quite nicely from the projects you just mentioned from the mid-90s. At that time we started to introduce computational techniques in the office. Until then we had been developing a level of hand-drawn virtuosity using French curves, models, and the Xerox machine to distort images. Zaha’s innovative idea was to argue that we can literally follow this rapid hand-calligraphy into space. This created a desire for tools to make that happen. At the same time, digital and microelectronic developments had advanced to a point where the animation and film industry had developed a series of tools about simulating, ‘visualating’ physical processes, like clouds moving in the sky, water surfaces rippling, hair flying in the wind, and cloth folding. We brought these kinds of tools into architecture.

That accelerated the process and created a kind of new style, or expanded new style. Often it seems that this was dependent on, and inspired by, digital tools and computational process. In reality one could say that the desire (and need) to bring these things in was a serendipitous coincidence: having developed the work, the tool came along that might have never entered architecture, but was brought into architecture and accelerated what we had been doing. That is the story in a nutshell of Digital Hadid.

HUO It is interesting that this link is also in another important project, the Museum of Islamic Art in Doha, where many of the things partly described here refer to digital, repetitive patterns, but also to Islamic patterns. Geometry and calligraphy are very important aspects of your work.

ZH The Museum of Islamic Art in Doha is about gradation and colour and a gradation of space, from very small to very large units. It was also an early break from the museum not being seen as an object, but as a field. Basically we were looking at other ways to organise patterns, which influence the very idea of galleries. They were superimposed. There was one system, which had all the ramps (like motorways) inside the museum.

HUO I wanted to refer back to something you said during our last interview, which has fascinated me ever since. It has to do with a shift towards the East, the emerging architecture and art scenes in China, in India, in the Middle East. You actually disagreed about this and said that the most exciting developments at the moment are happening in Central Asia. This is something few people look at. But you are working on an important project in Baku. Can you tell us about your vision of Central Asia and your experience with the Baku project?

ZH There are incredible things to be discovered in Asia and the Arab world. The Middle East is a very interesting domain in terms of new projects. They are beginning to connect to a global idea. What is interesting is the relationship between digital work and patterning in Islamic art and architecture. And geometry is what guides them. We always think that Islamic architecture is only about arches, or decorative elements, but there is actually a connection between that world and very progressive digital work.

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HUO For me your new MAXXI museum in Rome is a cinematographic experience. While visiting it, I kept thinking that it is like being in a film. Czesław Miłosz, the visionary poet of Kraków, told me in our interview that he actually thinks that everybody in the 20th and 21st centuries, no matter if they are poets, novelists, or architects are influenced by the cinematographic experience. I was wondering to what extent films have influenced your buildings?

ZH Film is all about movement, speed, and movement through space. I find it interesting that films are also about frames. The way we did our early work, and the animation later was all about frames – before the possibility of digital modelling – and how we move through space frame by frame. Each sequence is different from the previous sequence. There was no repetitiveness; it was about a fluent movement through space. I remember when someone from Philadelphia came to the opening in Rome with her 16-year-old son, who told me about the building: ‘It’s very interesting. It’s really like being in a river.’ I was so excited because somebody who was not in the profession could read it better than architects. They are so rigid because of the way that they were educated. Instead here was a kid. It was very touching, because my first idea was about a ‘delta’ where your site floats, where the mega stream becomes the galleries and the minor ones become bridges that connect to them. He had a very accurate reading of the space.

HUO Many of your projects also have to do with light. Can you tell us more about the relationship between light and your buildings?

ZH In Rome, for example, the light is fantastic: it’s the Mediterranean light; it’s Arte Povera. Most of the objects were on the ground. We had a soft light to follow the artwork, which was stunning. The whole repertoire has to do with how to penetrate the site, how to carve space and allow light and life into the site. We don’t have a private domain, but it actually becomes a civic and public domain. You can do it in a very intricate, precise way, and not only about the way natural light comes in, but also about the way we light buildings, which have different qualities at night. This also goes back to some work I was very interested in relating to the idea of a whole new skyline, where there is ‘day and night’ like the song Night and Day. We did some research on the change of elevation of the city of New York from daytime to night-time; it becomes much more random at night due to all the skyscrapers. So we thought, why not start with a building with randomised elevations, which highlights that interest in light and how you can penetrate a building?

HUO To what extent does chance play a role in your work?chance play a role in your work?chance

ZH It was very important for my early work. That’s why I actually like drawings and models, because you make mistakes, and then you can start seeing things differently. I am sure this could be done by computing but not to the same extent. In that case it is much more rigid. At least for me it is more rigid, because I wouldn’t know how to do it. There isn’t much of an element of chance unless you build randomised progress into a project. I believe in randomness and chance theory, from maths to architecture. This started with an obsession with the 90 degree angle. People always wonder why everything I design is diagonal and nothing is 90 degrees. It was because when I was a student at AA, there were no studios. I had to take my drawing board every day from my house to the

AA and from the AA back to my house. Sometimes I didn’t have time to pack everything. Drawing techniques were pretty primitive then. I did not have rulers with me or my right angle. I did not like the right angle, so I tried to guess what the 90 degree angle might be. It became slightly oblique. It all started off as a ‘house’ strategy, but then it became a complete strategy: nothing at 90 degrees.

HUO We once talked about the necessity of having a book of all your sketches.

ZH The sketches are interesting because they became a method. If I traced one layer to another on paper, it would give me the right degree of transparency. But it was also compressed, as in the fields of archaeology or geology. It was never anything like it was before. Every level was different. I applied a level of seamlessness. Very early sketches of the Irish Prime Minister’s Residence (1979 – 80) were done on paper that was always cut. The carving started at that point. So the interesting point was ‘zero’. This way of creating very complex projections was very common before computing. It readjusted all the distortions and deformations.

HUO There could be an exhibition of your drawings and calligraphy.

ZH We could do that together. There’s my calligraphy and we can also consider a show on my geometric studies, which would be interesting.

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HANS ULRICH OBRIST You have also always done mobile structures. The Serpentine Galleries’ series of Pavilions started with you in 2000, when Julia Peyton-Jones invited you to design the first Pavilion. We invited you to do a second Pavilion in 2007 called Lilas. And now we meet in your Chanel Mobile Art Pavilion.1

ZAHA HADID I was always very attracted to exhibitions, because there was a time when it was the only way of spreading the word about the work Zaha Hadid Architects do. Some of these pavilions were very exciting. It is nice to have something moving around from one place to another, from city to city.

HUO From very early on, you told me that designing mobile architecture had always been a dream of yours.

ZH Or things that moved, like the kinetic elements developed in the plans for the Guggenheim Museum in Taichung, where the interior galleries could be radically transformed exploring an idea of flying in space, of the skeleton, and so forth.

HUO The visionary Lebanese poet Etel Adnan, in a beautiful text 2 about your Pavilion, writes: ‘What I like in the work she has created for the esplanade at the Institut du Monde Arabe is its essential ambiguity, its wealth of evocation.’ She talks about the idea of the [Chanel Art] Pavilion being very cosmopolitan and I thought that was very interesting: a Pavilion for the world.

ZH Yes, because it was designed to travel, it’s not related to a particular context or rooted in one area. It’s rooted in a global context and that makes it much more urban or cosmopolitan.

HUO It can pop up anywhere. In her text, Adnan also says that if one looks at the Pavilion, it’s almost like it’s waiting to go on a new journey. It could go into the desert – that could be nice.

ZH The Pavilion is built like a boat, with a frame and elements attached to it – it is a form of boat construction. They were going to build it in two halves and then float it on rafts on the Thames, assembling the parts on site – it would have been really stunning.

HUO In a previous interview you told me that the museum could go from the inside to the outside of a city. Do you see the Pavilion as an urban structure, inextricably connected to the city in which it’s installed?

ON MOBILE ARCHITECTURE

O P E N I N G O F T H E C H A N E L M O B I L E A R T P A V I L I O N , I N S T I T U T D U M O N D E A R A B E , P A R I S , 2 0 1 1

ZH What’s interesting is that it’s not only about the way the building sits or nests in an urban fabric, it’s also how urbanism is sucked into the interior, so the interior becomes a part of the exterior – even if it’s solid, it doesn’t have to be transparent. It happens in a lot of our projects.

HUO Maybe it’s the moment to build on other planets. Have you ever thought about building on the moon?

ZH It would take another lifetime.

HUO Yes, but it could be great a project.

ZH Yes it could be great as a project, but I think the challenge – and that of this whole thesis – is building as if on another planet, but on Earth. Almost like a diversion of gravity, rethinking structure, rethinking typology and urbanism. Fluidity is like a shifting cloud, but it is stationed here.

HUO To sketch the extra-terrestrial on Earth, that’s beautiful.

1 For more information visit www.zaha-hadid.com/architecture/chanel-art-pavilion.

2 This text is published in this volume on page 150.

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HANS ULRICH OBRIST I would like to start talking to you about The Irish Prime Ministers’ Residence (1979 – 80) series. Your drawings often have a sense of Prime Ministers’ Residence (1979 – 80) series. Your drawings often have a sense of Prime Ministers’ Residencedynamism, a floating and exploding quality to them. What is the most important lesson you have learned? When did you take recourse to drawin gs and paintings as tools for investigation?

ZAHA HADID What was interesting was the lesson to be learned through fragmentation: you cannot really occupy just any kind of moment. We decided we were going to look at these compositions as a way of organising space. I think this is the most important lesson I have learned: the idea of reorganising space in a different way. The idea of the exploded drawings is really evident in The Irish Prime Ministers’ Residence. It’s truly about taking a drawing apart, not taking the building apart, but taking the actual drawing apart.

HUO When speaking about the BMW Central Building in Leipzig you refer to the idea of the workplace as a playground. I was hoping you could talk a little bit about this in relation to Fun Palace (Swiss Pavilion, 14th International Architecture Fun Palace (Swiss Pavilion, 14th International Architecture Fun PalaceExhibition, Venice Biennale, 2014)?

ZH I think that, today, work and the possibility of a really different organisation has to do with the diagram, not in an idea of pure efficiency. I think that you can occupy space and make clusters of organisation that would allow you to have proper meetings. There are many discussions about ‘what is workspace’ nowadays. The Irish Prime Ministers’ Residence was really a new concept because it was an anti-typology. In 1979, the idea of typology was a big source of questioning: the typology of a museum, library, or a house – even an estate or a guesthouse or a house for an official. The idea behind the Irish House was to make a playground for politicians so they could have a political – or poetical – space.

HUO In relation to this, there is a question of complexity, social complexity. This is a point that we’ve discussed a lot in previous conversations in relation to The Great Utopia: The Russian and Soviet Avant-Garde, 1915 – 1932 exhibition (1992 – 93). You also wrote in your article – which is really like a manifesto – about the Pritzker Architecture Prize, that what is new in our epoch is a new level of social complexity; and that there are no secret formulas anymore, no global solutions. You then discuss the complexities and dynamism of contemporary life. So I was wondering, can you talk a little bit more about this notion of social complexity?

LESSONS LEARNED FROM FRAGMENTATION

H A U S D E R K U N S T, ‘ U T O P I A S T A T I O N ’ E X H I B I T I O N , M U N I C H , 2 2 J A N U A R Y 2 0 0 5 ZH I think the way that cities are used is very different nowadays; they are no longer organised in the same way. It is no longer based around this old understanding of work ethic, where you have to go home at a particular time. There is no longer one particular typology and I think this has really changed the patterns of habitation so much.

As an architect, your clients are many different kinds of people, no longer single entities. I think this really adds to the richness of space. What came out of this is that people just want to be in an event space that’s not simply made of one single space, but of a field of spaces.

That’s why I think that Field as a project began to emerge as sort of many clusters of events Field as a project began to emerge as sort of many clusters of events Fieldbrought together on one large field. I think that Field is also very interesting in terms of Field is also very interesting in terms of Fieldhow people encounter each other in a space, where they can sit and stand, and how there can be no hierarchy in the way you can use these spaces.

HUO And this leads us to your museum projects. As we are here in an exhibition space, maybe it’s interesting to talk a little bit more about your museums. There have been an amazing number of museum projects, such as the MAXXI in Rome or the Guggenheim in Taichung. Could you speak more about this idea of interior complex in relation to museums? I was mentioning the idea of Merzbau 1. In Rome this idea of Merzbau becomes a whole new valid model.

ZH It was a discussion against the idea of the white box and whether the white box gives you the most flexibility. Now, you’ve got variety, the variety of space, because curators have so many different interpretations of the spaces they work with. The point is that the complexity of space doesn’t detract from the exhibited art, and how through the complexity of space, you can actually interpret many variations curatorially. It gives the curators many more possibilities to explore many different leads and connections.

The museum we designed in Cincinnati (Lois & Richard Rosenthal Center for Contemporary Art, 2003) is a very different kind of project because it is a vertical museum. The idea was to do two things at the same time: to exhibit art but also to rejuvenate the downtown area, downtowns in American cities are dying because of flight to the suburbs. The interiors of cities have become derelict. Cincinnati gave this site to the Contemporary Arts Center to make a museum. The intention was – because the site is so small – to make room vertically. And because it’s a vertical museum, the circulation inside is very important, hence the staircases. The idea was to create an aggregated space, with many stairs that interlock. A catalogue of an endless variety of spaces is created within these kinds of clusters.

In discussing shifting geometry with this kind of exterior, I wasn’t sure whether these kind of games and tricks would work spatially. But when you go there, although it’s very small, these kinds of things work because of the vanishing points and how the walls are organised upstairs, disappearing into the outside. As you move through it, you are always looking beyond the perimeter of the space.

HUO You have three other unrealised museum projects.

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ZH I think there are quite a few.

HUO I’m interested in the relationship between realised and unrealised work: how many of your projects are realised and how many are unrealised?

ZH A very small fraction of my projects are realised in comparison to what goes unrealised. I didn’t do too many museums before I began to build. Interestingly, that’s what I did my thesis on.

HUO So the museum has played a role from the very beginning of your work; as you said, if one looks at your thesis project, a museum already pops up somehow. In fact a lot of themes you have talked about tonight are already in this very first project, Malevich’s Tektonik (1976 – 77). The whole idea of superimposition, of complexity, of juxtaposition. Basically your thesis was on a 19th century museum and a station.

ZH Well, the station existed. The Malevich’s Tektonik project was a site for art which was the Hungerford Bridge and connected to these early projects. Then we built another bridge as a project. The only 20th century architectural experimentation in Britain was opposite Charing Cross station: the Festival Hall, the National Theatre, and the Hayward Gallery. These buildings were examples of 1960s architecture and the idea was that the building would straddle the 19th and 20th century and collapse at the footsteps of the 21st century. That you can have a structure straddling, like an enormous bridge, above the station as a new kind of hotel, implied a hedonistic existence. The idea of the horizontal skyscraper began to re-emerge in this project and later in the The Peak (1982 – 83), where I think it was also more magnified.

HUO Here in a station (Utopia Station exhibition in Munich), I think it’s interesting to talk about your other stations.

ZH We have maybe five projects in Italy: one in Rome, one in Salerno – which is a freight terminal, we’re doing two railway stations, including one in Naples. The Naples station is a bridge over the rails. So you can go down like a stream onto all the tracks. The idea is that you move up and then you move down again to all the tracks because you are sitting above them as opposed at one side of the station. We’re also doing a large masterplan in Singapore, and two masterplans in Bilbao for an interesting area down river, a desolate area. It’s an interesting initiative.

HUO In China?

ZH China yes, in China. I mean we’re supposed to be doing it in Rome . . . it will be interesting to see what happens with the Taichung Guggenheim. It has two very large wings connected by a very large lobby. The building pulls in many directions and so it is built horizontally to connect all its parts. The idea is that it all connects horizontally and vertically, so you pull it up to make your offices and you pull it down to connect it to the landscape of the opera house. This building moves out, it is a mobile building; mobility and movement are parts of the language of this project. The interior becomes an almost

unique organic experience, like the inside of a lost animal. The rooflines are flexible, allowing you to have a relationship between the paper work, when it’s completely closed or other exhibits. The mountain becomes hillier or more flat. This wing cantilevers over the street to allow you to enter and then the office building is pulled up. It’s kind of like a large chewing gum hill which you can pull in different ways. A Martha Graham dance piece.

HUO This leads directly to the last two questions I wanted to ask you about this project. There is a lot about the pooling together of knowledge, making links between presence of artists, the theatre, and the architecture in this project. Very much this idea of ‘utopia station’, going beyond this fear of pooling knowledge; this is something that you have always worked around. You’ve also worked for the theatre and had curatorial experiences. I’d like to talk about your lesser-known projects, in particular an exhibition on Rodchenko at the Guggenheim in 1992. I was wondering to what extent these sort of conditions between disciplines are important to you.

ZH Yes the show at the Guggenheim in New York, The Great Utopia. There were some 1200 pieces in the museum, obviously many sat on the ramps and we really had to interpret their use. It was interesting, while we were installing on these zigzagging walls and ramps, we had to squeeze people to the edge and the way you walk through the space.

What was nice about the experience at the Guggenheim is that it started off by showing mobile pieces, like Cobra which were hung from the ceiling, but apparently people always hit their heads on these objects. So there was always a kind of low table, so if they didn’t hit their heads, then they stumbled over table. There’s an idea of doing a typography internally, with these kinds of things emerging from the ground of the Guggenheim as a way of not allowing people to hurt themselves. They suspend these things like a galaxy of objects. It’s like a journey. I thought it would be interesting to hang a picture here and there, saying it’s a kind of universe of art pieces.

Many of the experiences were very weird. For example, we decided to use this kind of latex to do very large compositions on the walls. To interpret them on the walls, we played this kind of game of white on white, which no one can see. When you stick this rubber down, it bubbles. So we had to put soap and water on the Guggenheim’s entire floor. There were like 20 students gliding about as they applied this latex. It’s the only way to get perfect latex! It was really fantastic. We had only two months to design and install the show. There were some really fantastic moments.

I always like to do installations because the aim of my first shows back in 1981 was to do thematic environments, for example my 59 Eaton Place (1981 – 82) project. After that 59 Eaton Place (1981 – 82) project. After that 59 Eaton Placewe did a dance piece Metapolis (1999) for the company Charleroi Dance and the Pet Shop Boys, then an opera at Ostengratz, Peter Beard. The opera was actually very interesting because it was also about discovering how to use material. And then there was the Mind Zone (1998 – 2000). What was interesting was the idea of representing the mind through Zone (1998 – 2000). What was interesting was the idea of representing the mind through Zonenot only science, but also art installations. They are very interesting projects and I hope I can always do them.

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HUO And the most recent example is actually your Latent Utopias: Experiments with Contemporary Architecture (2003) show. It went beyond this idea of you with Contemporary Architecture (2003) show. It went beyond this idea of you with Contemporary Architectureinventing an exhibition or a display feature. You actually curated the show and chose the content. I think it’s very relevant because if one looks at the history of the exhibition, crucial exhibitions were very often curated by artists, from Gustave Courbet’s 1855 Exposition Universelle to the many architectural biennales.Exposition Universelle to the many architectural biennales.Exposition Universelle

ZH There were two questions put to us, one was: ‘do you want to do a show on architecture or do a show for me’? And I thought, maybe it’s nicer to do the two things together. I discussed the idea with architect Patrik Schumacher of maybe wanting to do these rooms and how each room has an environment kind of, almost like a hotel room. Hotel rooms or living rooms. There were many different people involved, 20 – 30 participants, many of them quite young. They were asked to interpret, with a new space, an interior space, a utopian space, its connection to computing and manufacturing. I think that is really the next leap: how to connect research and utilisation.

HUO I’m fascinated by the title, how did you come up with Latent Utopia?

ZH You’ll have to ask Patrik. I think it was the idea that there were inherent visions which were beginning to surface, and they were not obvious. But there was a kind of discovery of an unspoken collective mass of similar issues and gains. It was not so blatant. The idea was to unravel and unleash some of these thoughts in the exhibition and see also the connection between all the participants. Also, I think not many people discuss utopian ideas because there is a disconnection between real life and so-called utopia. That part of the ambition of many artists is to build the theoretical project. To actually achieve it. It was a way to allow many people to explore their ideals.

HUO Would you describe yourself as slow or fast?

ZH The Vitra Fire Station (1993) was all based on movement. I wanted a space that was actually very calm, so my intention might have been to deal with speed. But the actual experience might have been quite different. I think it’s important to have a variety of experiences. I mean you don’t have just one single experience. At home it’s very different; in a public space its very different. What I’m saying is that I might use some of these ideas to explore a spatial situation and actually end up with something else.

Special thanks to Chris Dercon.

1 Merzbau is a vast architectural/sculptural project of the poet and visual artist Kurt Schwitters (1887 – 1948).

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HANS ULRICH OBRIST There are several chapters on your interest in the Russian avant-garde: your 1976 – 77 graduation project for the Architectural Association (AA), Malevich’s Tektonik – a hotel on London’s Hungerford Bridge; The Great Utopia: The Russian and Soviet Avant-Garde, 1915 – 1932 exhibition – a show of Soviet avant-garde work at the Guggenheim Museum, New York in 1992; and now [2010] Zaha Hadid and Suprematism at Galerie Gmurzynska, Zurich. How did this interest in the Russian avant-garde come about?

ZAHA HADID I first became interested in it because of Elia Zenghelis, my teacher at the AA. He was a great teacher. I met Elia in my first year at the school when he gave a talk about Russian Constructivism in 1972/73. He was such a magnetic character. He kind of gripped everybody. It was like a performance.

HUO So he was an expert on Russian Constructivism?

ZH Not an expert, but he talked about it. Then in my fourth year, we were given a project, the ‘Malevich’s Tektonik’, which was the idea that if a slide of a sculpture by Malevich were to be imposed on an urban context, it becomes architecture. So this study was given to us and we had to find a scale for it, we had to give it a site. I imposed a ‘Malevich’s Tektonik’ on Hungerford Bridge in London, in a series of horizontal layers.

HUO There was another very early project for a bridge crossing the river that you did at the AA. Can you tell me about that?

ZH That was another fifth-year project, my fifth-year thesis, the Museum of the Nineteenth Century (1977 – 78) at Charing Cross station. On the other side of the river from the station is the Southbank Centre, which is a 20th-century experiment. So the idea of the bridge was that it started in the 20th century and straddled the Thames to the 21st century. It explored the notion that in an urban context, contemporary architecture was not in the same position as it had been in the early part of the century where you abolished the ground to start again on a new pattern. Contemporary architecture isn’t necessarily sensitive to its surroundings on the one hand, but doesn’t destroy them on the other. The Museum of the Nineteenth Century was basically two intersecting beams, one being a hotel and the other being a museum, above the existing station. There were ideas about juxtapositions, superimpositions, different kinds of programmes, different adjacencies – the alternative of a different kind of world where you were allowed to do things that you might not do in a domestic or work environment. And it stemmed from my interest in the Russian avant-garde, the idea of the horizontal elevation.

THE RUSSIAN AVANT-GARDE OR ZAHA HADID’S INFLUENCES

Z U R I C H , 2 7 S E P T E M B E R 2 0 1 0 HUO It was unusual for an architect in the 70s to revisit an artist like Kazimir Malevich, who said, ‘I have transformed myself in the zero of form’. So when you revisited Russian Constructivism, it wasn’t fashionable.

ZH No, not at all. When they gave me that project, I didn’t know anything about the Russians or Malevich, but there was a renewed interest at the time because of the show. Then I read Ville et révolution: architecture et urbanisme soviétiques des années vingt (1969) by Anatole Kopp on the Russian Constructivists and some books on El Lissitzky.

HUO You went on to become a partner at the Office of Metropolitan Architecture in Rotterdam with your teachers Elia Zenghelis and Rem Koolhaas, and your projects continued to refer to the Russians. What was it that interested you as a practice?

ZH The reason the Russians really excited us wasn’t for their formal and painterly investigations, but in terms of their architecture and programme, the fact that they were really inventive. In the 1920s there was a new kind of social order in Russia that made it possible for certain new ideas and new programmes to take place. In the late 1970s, when there was a general economic depression in the West, the cultural background for this work was ripe, in the sense that one thought that one could inject certain ideas that might regenerate it or revitalise it.

HUO In your text for the Zurich exhibition, you say the 1920s avant-garde not only anticipated the urbanist concept of the 1950s, but that projects were designed that anticipated the mega-structure utopias of the mid-1960s.

ZH Yes. In a way there was a parallel between these two situations.

HUO If one looks at the works that were exhibited in your graduation show at the AA in 1983, like your painting The World (89 Degrees) (1983), all these things you’d done in relation to Constructivism came together. It was somehow a fusion of many aspects – the gravity, the warps, the conversions of the line – all of these things come from Constructivism.

ZH Yes. A lot happened in that year: I did the The Irish Prime Ministers’ Residence(1979 – 80) and 59 Eaton Place, London (1981 – 82), and then in one month we did Parc de la Villette (1982 – 83) in Paris and Villette (1982 – 83) in Paris and Villette The Peak (1982 – 83) in Hong Kong, which was based on the surrounding landscape and proposed a new geology or a new ecology. What came into my work at this time was the continuous line that has many different curvatures and trajectories on the same surface, and distortion became more and more developed in the drawings, using different perspectives.

HUO Your drawings are autonomous works!

ZH What’s very sad is that thousands of years of perfecting drawing disappeared in twenty years.

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HUO Because of the computer?

ZH Yes. Of course, we can do things much better now on a computer. But the artistry has gone.

HUO Do you remember the day when you had the epiphany for The Peak?

ZH It really came out of previous projects; I don’t think it came by itself. In a way it began with Malevich’s Tektonik. The brief for The Peak, as a competition, was very similar to the programme for Malevich’s Tektonik. At that point, the unit at the AA was dealing with the fact that there were certain modern tendencies and traditions that had yet to be researched and investigated. Because the school was operating as a kind of laboratory for developing new ideas in architecture, this work began. Another thing that was important for us was to understand and develop our work within a 20th-century tradition – it was important to look back at certain Modernist works as a kind of background material for our own work.

HUO Where do you think the biggest connection to Suprematism comes in your buildings?

ZH The whole idea of lightness, floating, structure and how it lands gently on the ground. It all comes from that.

HUO So it’s about general principles.

ZH Yes.

HUO In the Zurich show, you exhibited pieces by Ilya Chashnik, El Lissitzky, Alexander Rodchenko, and Nikolai Suetin. How did you choose the work?

ZH I chose work from the gallery’s collection. But some of these pieces are from The Great Utopia show that I did for the Guggenheim in New York.

HUO The show brings together three temporalities: the temporality of the historic avant-garde, the temporality of your early work, and the temporality of your current work.

ZH Yes. Everyone at Zaha Hadid Architects went back to our old work and showed it with the new work. For example, one of the sketches for The Peak was blown up onto fabric. Another was printed on a sofa [Zephyr Sofafabric. Another was printed on a sofa [Zephyr Sofafabric. Another was printed on a sofa [ ], a new furniture piece.

HUO Another of your new pieces in the show is the Lunar Triptych Relief. Lunar Triptych Relief. Lunar Triptych ReliefCan you tell me about that?

ZH There are reliefs like the two big ones downstairs in black and white [Negative and Positive Perspective Reliefs], but I wanted a relief like a site plan. It goes back to the idea of an obsession with space.

HUO Seeing the drawings of the Suprematists and your drawings together, one sees the ambiguities of Suprematism. Architect Norman Foster has written that in your paintings you exploited these ambiguities, especially the ways in which its forms can read as horizontal or vertical and its spaces recessive or flat at the same time. There’s this idea of warped spaces. You can see it’s 2-D and 3-D: the two dimensionality of the wall becomes three dimensions and the reliefs become two dimensions. It’s all about ambiguity.

ZH Yes. That was influenced by the Russians, but not the drawings – by photography like Rodchenko’s.

HUO Last time we did an interview we spoke about Rodchenko’s flying objects – their defying gravity.

ZH Yes. The Russians were very interested in that: conquering the universe. And their work was very cosmic. You see this later with Sputnik 1 and Yuri Gagarin and all the outer-space projects. I think the early 20th century must have been a very exciting moment, not only in Russia, but also in Germany and America.

HUO It was a transdisciplinary moment, not just in Russian art and architecture, but also in dance with the Ballets Russes. Can you talk about the display of the exhibition?

ZH It’s like a 3-D painting in space: an explosion into the space. In a way, the exhibition is like a conference between linear forms and landscape. All these new pieces are about landscape and topography, so sitting on the sofa is like sitting in a landscape. The black-on-black wall is a take on a room in The Great Utopia show, which was black and the paintings were black. The only colour used on this painting is the red and orange ochre as in Malevich’s work. And then there was another black-on-black Rodchenko that connected back to the black-on-black wall.

HUO Malevich said, ‘I’ve ripped through the blue lamp shade of the constraints of colour and come out into the white’. Russian Constructivism is essentially black and white, but then there are certain injections of colour. They’re like punctuation marks. You do this with some of your drawings, there is an injection of colour. The rooms also resonate with each other.

ZH Yes. We should do this whole book on tracing paper, because you could see one going through the other.

HUO That would be very beautiful. Let’s go back to the show in New York in 92, which was obviously the predecessor to the Zurich show.

ZH The amazing thing was we did that entire show in two months.

HUO Wow! Artist Richard Hamilton once said that we only remember exhibitions that invent a display feature. One of the reasons the show is so

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memorable is that you suspended all the paintings. What prompted the idea of suspending the works?

ZH It was this idea of floating: suspension in space, not being attached to the wall. It was based on the historic shows of Suprematism, but with a new interpretation. You saw all the works in one go. That’s why I like the Guggenheim – because of the ability to see different perspectives all at the same time. And I discovered much later that Frank Lloyd Wright did drawings of how to show works on the ramps by suspending them.

We used the screens in the museum to show posters, which pushed you to the edge of the ramp. We wanted to use the spiral ramp to tell a story, and the idea of moving seamlessly began to emerge. We wanted to see how you could interrupt that with obstacles. There was always opposition or tension between Suprematism and Constructivism, between Vladimir Tatlin and Malevich, which we brought out. And there was a connection between the two spirals: Tatlin’s spiral Monument to the Third International (1919 – 20) and the rotunda spiral. It connects back to the city of Samarra International (1919 – 20) and the rotunda spiral. It connects back to the city of Samarra Internationaland the spiral minarets in Iraq, as well as the Tower of Babel.

HUO You’ve also mentioned that there was almost a religious moment when you opened up Malevich’s Black Square (1915).

ZH Yes. All the curators in the Russian art world were there to witness the opening of the box and the hanging of the Black Square at two in the morning. It was an important Black Square at two in the morning. It was an important Black Squaremoment because it was the first time that all the Soviet republics opened up. Now they’re all separate states, but then they were still under Soviet rule and it was one country. But they opened up so that you could borrow the material. If you did that show now, you’d find it difficult to get the works because you’d have to borrow them from I don’t know how many countries. It was a unique moment.

HUO It was a window of opportunity. We’re talking about the utopia of the early 20th century in Russia. What about utopia now? How do you see utopia now, in 2010?

ZH It’s an interesting time, because 30 years ago there was such a mistrust of – and lack of belief in – architects and architecture. It hasn’t necessarily changed that much, but I think there’s more optimism. There’s incredible wealth and buoyancy. Places like the Netherlands have always built projects; now it’s Asia and the Middle East. But no one has combined all the issues in one project for one country. Nobody has done a master plan of a city that has all the ideas in one place, like the ideal American city or Berlin or whatever. There is no ideal place. They haven’t capitalised on the opportunity to rebuild Beirut, for example. That’s why I think these ideas of superimpositions and juxtapositions within a certain context still prevail, because we’re not talking about demolishing the whole place. You have to deal with ideas of layering in order to relate to existing buildings. And I think there should be more research into appropriate housing. How do we live? What are our work spaces like? Is it a green space or a non-space? The impact on the city when there’s a new development. It hasn’t been done, really.

HUO In the Constructivist moment in Russia, there was a clear social contract.

ZH They were people with very ideological politics. Nobody does this type of work now. Maybe it will emerge out of very difficult places, countries like Iraq or Palestine or cities like Medellín or Caracas – these places that are in real turmoil; something will come out of that.

HUO In Medellín architecture makes a real difference. They put libraries on top of the slums with cable cars and suddenly it changed a neighbourhood. Architecture can make a real difference. Do you have a utopia, an unrealised dream for the 21st century?

ZH To go on holiday! No. There are lots of things that haven’t been done, from the small details to the large picture. I’m curious about certain parts of the world, how they will develop. I ask myself, ‘How do you manage Cairo?’ Or ‘How do you sort out Baghdad?’ These are very difficult problems.

HUO What’s your advice to a young architect?

ZH I know from my experience that without research and experimentation not much can be discovered. With experimentation, you think you’re going to find out one thing, but you actually discover something else. That’s what I think is really exciting. You discover much more than you bargain for. I think there should be no end to experimentation.

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ZAHA

What’s in a name? In Zaha Hadid’s case, almost everything. The ‘Z’ evokes the future (think ‘Zardoz’, ‘Zod’ and other sci- fi attachés). Say ‘Zaha’ out loud: it sounds like a perfectly polished steel blade cutting through air. It suggests a neologism. If our names are promises that we grow to inevitably fulfil (or entirely reject), then Zaha was destined for a time and a place always yet to come. An asymptote in reverse.

YOUTH

Some twenty years ago, when I was 21, I started work at the Office of Zaha Hadid, located in a converted Victorian school. Regardless of gender, we all arrived through the ‘Boys’ Entrance’. I was a fresh undergraduate – meaning bookish and blindly ambitious, entitled and essentially ignorant. But to be let into the heart of a living avant-garde at the end of the 20th century, where the spirit of Malevich and Suprematism were kept alive, this made me ecstatic. Zaha was not prejudiced against our preternatural ages, our mawkish youth. All she cared about was whether our ambition was in kinship with hers. And whether we would be prepared to forsake sleep for this kinship.

X-RATED

After some months, I discovered Zaha’s default desire to publicly humiliate or berate me – or indeed anyone else working in close proximity to her. However, a few months later, once I’d understood that this was merely a paradoxical expression of affection, an exercise in eccentric closeness, her X-rated jibes no longer felt like tiny spears but landed like soft snowflakes. This is what it means to be simultaneously cursed andcherished at the same time.

WOMAN

In the media, Zaha’s name was forever prefixed by a deeply unimaginative trinity of adjectives – ‘Arab’, ‘Muslim’ and ‘woman’; none of her contemporaries would be prefixed by a corresponding ‘Occidental’, ‘Christian’ or ‘man’. Was it a backhanded insult to her, and to womankind in general, to constantly celebrate Zaha as ‘the most important female architect in the world’? A spiritual predecessor was the Italian-female architect in the world’? A spiritual predecessor was the Italian-femaleBrazilian architect Lina Bo Bardi, whose obdurate output of exposed concrete out-toughs the toughest of male Brutalists, while never rhetorically engaging with gender.

FROM Z TO A AND ZAHA AGAIN

Shumon Basar

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VERTEX

‘A point where two or more straight lines meet.’

UNIMPRESSED

Even if, at the office, we forsook sleep for several weeks to produce a project that in our youthful opinion seemed unique and appropriately Utopian, Zaha was usually unimpressed. It just meant we had to try again. And again. Try harder. Test every possible option. And the impossible ones as well.

TEXT MESSAGES

Because Zaha could be anywhere in the world (Beirut, Istanbul, Miami), her text messages pinged us at any time of the day or night. Brutally-to-the point, her command of this communicative medium was a total Gesamkunstwerk. In a way, we can now measure her absence by all the text messages we will never receive.

SHOPPING

Shopping for clothes with Zaha was fun but it was also serious. For her, the daily practice of sketching sinuous lines, which suggested a private language without words, was also fun, but fundamentally serious.

REM

This may be contentious, but if it were possible to combine Rem Koolhaas with Zaha Hadid into some synthesised super-architect, the result would be the greatest architect of the modern period. Period. Their gifts were diametrically complimentary; a karmic distribution of finely honed genius.

QUANTUM THEORY

A belief in miraculous simultaneity. Not either, but both: wave and particle; cat and particle; cat and and no cat; wall and floor; solid and floor; solid and and weightless; still and weightless; still and and accelerating. and accelerating. and

PAINTING

I wanted to work for Zaha not to build buildings (that seemed so pedestrian back then), but to paint those paintings. The ones that collapse several orthographic projections into those paintings. The ones that collapse several orthographic projections into thosea single widescreen picture plane, where the vanishing points are still and accelerating and accelerating andoutwards, at some quantum speed, warping the perspective the way light bends near a black hole. At the office, I learnt that these paintings were also social condensers. Their complexity of shape and colour was often the result of a group of people painting for weeks or months, the way traditional Persian or Turkish carpets would be collectively woven, in ritualised time as much as matter.

OSCAR

One of my allocated tasks was to pick Zaha up from her apartment in Earl’s Court, West London. After battling the cross-town traffic in the office’s second-hand black cab, I’d arrive and wait for her in the living room, a large white space with a plain dark carpet. Pre-mobile phone, pre-Internet days. The only things arranged here were a white fibreglass Eames chaise-longue and several other pieces designed by Zaha in the 1980s, including her ‘Sperm Table’. Each element commanded its own sculptural aura. In all my times visiting, I only ever saw one book, equally sculptural and poised, lying at the end of her ‘Whoosh Sofa’, sometimes open, sometimes closed. It was a wavy, wood-clad monograph of the Brazilian Modernist architect, Oscar Niemeyer.

NICKNAMES

People she liked and didn’t like would often have nicknames assigned to them. Looking back, I see that what she was doing, again and again, was playfully infantilising some of the most alpha-masculine architects in the world. Affectionately? Mostly, yes. Was she also appropriating power through language? That too. My nickname was Shu-Shu.

MUSLIM

See ‘Woman’ and ‘Iraqi’.

LONDON

London became her adopted home as a consequence of choosing the Architectural Association in the early 1970s. There, she famously studied with Léon Krier, Rem Koolhaas and Elia Zenghelis. There, she enlarged Malevich’s ‘Tecton’ to the size of the River Thames. There, she ran her own pedagogical programme – ‘Diploma Unit 9’ – devoted to the exploration of London’s hinterlands, and this enclave of research was, for a while, indistinguishable from her architectural practice. Although London did not yield major clients in the way that Germany and Japan did early on in her career, it became a laboratory of ideas, of relationships, of what it means to truly care about a place in which you were not born, but truly belonged to, in that inimitable way in which only immigrants love and belong to a place that has chosen them.

KINDNESS

What is a person once they’ve gone? It’s what remains, in remembering, as vividly in ten years time as it did ten years ago. I remember Zaha’s true kindness towards me, often forged in London traffic, inside that beat-up black cab, her in the back and me up front at the wheel, while I wondered, with all the intensity only young people possess, How did I manage to get here? I still ask that same question today, but now I can answer it. How did I manage to get here? I still ask that same question today, but now I can answer it. How did I manage to get here?And the answer, as for so many others in Zaha’s orbit, is because of that kindness, which seemed curiously contradictory to her outward reputation. The secret was just how much and for how many she cared.

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JEWELLERY

Weapon-like jewellery, raided from a royal spacecraft from the fifth millennium.

IRAQI

I never recall her Orientalising her work, or essentialising it through a retroactive and romantic prism. In the 21st century, when ‘emerging economies’ – i.e. the Non-West – decided to build new icons for a new era, they went to Zaha’s office. Many of these clients were in the Middle East. They were proud to be able to hire an ‘Arab architect’. But the truth is more complex and nebulous than either over-identifying her with or distancing her from her heritage and roots. She not only produced an architectural language that iconoclashed ‘Western’ and ‘Eastern’, but she embodied that personally, too. A living International Style.

HILARIOUS

When asked on BBC Radio for her Desert Island Discs, she listed amongst her choices, and in all seriousness, ‘Hotline Bling’ by Drake. So. Fucking. Hilarious.

GRAVITY/GOSSIP

‘I almost believed there was such a thing as zero gravity. I can now believe that buildings can float’. This is what Zaha told the legendary Architectural Association Chairman, Alvin Boyarsky, in the early 1980s. I was once privy to the unedited transcript of this interview, and there was plenty of gossip. It got redacted, naturally. No-one gossiped quite like Zaha. People were always absent from those abstract paintings and drawings, but they were never absent from her thoughts.

FRIENDSHIP

Friendships are design projects that tend to make sense looking backwards not forwards. Zaha’s friendships were a lifelong project, too, maybe even a single work, a friendship Gesamkunstwerk with a single foundation, branching off into multiplicities. She expected lifelong loyalty, but then again what serious friendship doesn’t?

EXTREME

Extreme everything: hyper-engineered cantilevers; Perspex heels; Futurist knuckle-duster jewellery; concrete that’s been melted down and blown into biomorphic bubbles; the end of gravity.

DEATH

Adolf Loos famously declared that only ‘the monument and the tomb’ were architecture; everything else was merely building. Oscar Niemeyer continued to draw and design until he was 104 years old. Philip Johnson’s reincarnations went on until he was 98.

Cedric Price, ever the contrarian, would give his buildings expiry dates, at which point, he believed, they should be taken down. Architecture often aspires to eternity, but must contend with finitude. Architects, perhaps, share the same imperative, famously allergic to retirement, because there is no wall between their life and their work. The work and the world.

CATCH-UP

The world, finally, caught up with Zaha’s visions. I’m so glad she lived to feel that glow.

BORING

Unlike Andy Warhol, who venerated boredom and the contours of its near monastic state, for Zaha, the worst thing anything or anyone could be was boring.

ARCHITECTURE

See ‘Zaha’.

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THE ENDURING JOURNEY OF ZAHA HADID

Etel Adnan

Zaha Hadid dreams with her eyes wide open. You can sense it. I have known it for decades, ever since I found a Japanese magazine devoted to her drawings of architectural projects. I said to myself: here are dreams on paper of constructions yet to come – or not to come.

I said to myself: here is a world straight out of the Russian revolution, from those early-20th-century revolutionary artists who, like the Pre-Socratics 2,500 years before, changed the world. What comes to mind is, of course, Suprematism, as most clearly shown by Malevich in his drawings and writings.

Hadid’s first architectural works seemed tinged with a gentle madness: huge rectangles looked as if they were slipping, then righting themselves, while falling into other geometries, like some game orchestrated by a world-building djinn.

This is because Hadid does not build homes or offices, but worlds that seem strange to us because we are not contemporary with ourselves.

Since those first projects, she has made her mark on the international scene. People are surprised now to see that the huge toys that emerged from her imagination are in fact wonderfully functional and also charged with ideas and mystery.

But what are the guiding principles of the contemporary? There are many – that goes without saying – but a few stand out. Our world today is wrapped up in the concept of energy, now more than ever. And, thanks to the energy that animates humankind as well as its creations, we are in a position to conceive of the conquest of the cosmos itself.

The cosmos is already being conquered: we have photos of remote planets, of the sun itself, the god of the Babylonians and the Egyptians is photographed, measured, scrutinised in its wraths and its eruptions. It is as old as we thought and its death is taken as a given.

Another aspect of the contemporary is what we call globalisation (which, in the mediatised world, means simultaneity); in other words, we have the reality and the image of the Earth as forming a whole, or all of humanity taken as a whole. Hadid’s architecture conforms perfectly to these two criteria: it radiates energy, it is not static in the least; which means that her buildings are fluid and have neither front nor back, but are meant to be looked at from every possible point of view. In this sense, they have no centre , and seem to be caught up in perpetual movement.

Her architecture is also cosmopolitan, international. Wherever they appear, her buildings are immediately at home, because the world itself, like Hadid’s creations, has no single centre, and because any point on Earth dignified by an event or a work of art immediately becomes central through that very fact, as central as every other place.

What I like in the work she has created for the esplanade at the Institut du Monde Arabe is its essential ambiguity, its wealth of evocation.

My first impression of it, when it was still under construction, was that of a boat that has run aground. My eyes were met with an incredibly powerful sight. A steel ship’s prow was there, in the middle of Paris, at the end of a tormented journey. It took my breath away.

Walking around the structure under construction, I said to myself: it’s a giant beignet, a form that rushed there on its own, propelled by fire and uncontrolled forces! The result of a kind of alchemy, really.

Looking at this great ‘object’ actually became a journey to discover the mental operations that had given rise to it.

I went in. The interior space was also architecture. The whole thing felt as if it wanted to fly away, to depart. This atypical but functional construction, which resists any predetermined function, is indeed a spaceship. The dream of artists to build habitations for the extra-planetary era we live in finds one of its realisations here. For today’s world – it’s a structure of today; for a radically new world – it’s a radically new thought.

Once inside, you are truly inside the seemingly scaled-down spaces of spaceships, spaces that are not scaled down by necessity but rather through a perfect economy of means: the work we are discussing seems to constitute a centripetal space, a space meant to protect anything found within its perimeter, like the insides of sea creatures, the interiors of seashells . . . This work in particular is a perfect example of an architecture at once cosmic and organic: these are vigorous curves that have the sheer rightness you feel when you spot crabs or cuttlefish or other living matter on the beach, manifesting the laws of Nature.

Hadid’s genius is in knowing how to join, like absolutely no one else, the feeling of openness with the feeling of the closed, in a single space. This gives her spaces a twofold identity, as if they were expanding and contracting at will. Because of the dynamic forms she created, the technological and the living become – as in the maddest dream of Malevich from almost a century ago – each other’s reversible face. By resolving in this way what seems always to have been a fundamental antinomy between matter and the living, she makes us attain a spirituality that is the result of the eye’s gliding over hyperbolic curves, a gliding that doesn’t seem to stop anywhere, and keeps being urged on . . . Seen from the outside or the inside, our structure stretches out and closes in; it undulates as if waves had built it at the mercy of the laws of the sea, it seems to float, to travel . . . It is solid and yet smooth as the surface of an egg, and it happily challenges all the taller buildings that surround it and that become, because of it, not obstacles but partners in a surprising experiment – not in solidity, but in movement.

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Speaking of movement, I can say that all of Hadid’s work is an invitation to a journey. One might think of Baudelaire’s ‘Invitation to a Voyage,’ written in this same Paris, in a century when empires coveted the Indies, a poem that invited us to discover sunsets and exotic perfumes. Hadid is a poet of forms and of materials that give presence to these forms; you have to admire these forms from close up, and from afar, discover in this woman who creates from hard materials, on hard material, a constant nostalgia for departure: everything she does seems to be always on the verge of a departure, a constant invitation to the imagination, and to the imaginary. It’s never just a question of living in these structures, since they envelop you like music; it’s a question, rather, of living in what liberates your mind by shaking it out of its torpor, by allowing it to transcend its own heaviness.

And now I would like to add that what also surprised me the most in this piece of architecture is something that appeared as a counterbalance: its very unexpected intimate nature. Zaha Hadid is a woman, and she creates, in cases like this one, a place you want to enter. First of all, from the outside, it is a place that is not just visual, but tactile: you want to touch it, caress it, you feel it enters very spontaneously into contact with all your senses, those that have a name and those that have none.

Once inside, you find yourself inside a secret, something to discover, a temptation, a promise of adventure. You are inside an architecture of great and knowing seduction.

The prototype for this adventurous construction was a mobile creation, a structure that could be taken apart and was meant to be placed, if necessary, in different locations: a roof, a terrace, an empty lot, a field. The construction was actually carried out, placed on a roof, and then taken apart to go elsewhere! We are indeed at the beginning of a movable architecture (floating houses or houses launched into the open air), a revolution in the concept of an art that has historically been regarded as the apogee of the permanent, the stable, but is also a reminder of encampments and nomad tents!

So there is something magical and at the same time absolutely right in the fact that in Paris it’s the Institut du Monde Arabe that houses the first work by Zaha Hadid in the capital, not just because of her Iraqi origins, but because of the thought that gave birth to this structure.

The Arab world contains on one hand the oldest cities in the world, nonetheless its culture, or rather cultures, are essentially nomadic. And this architecture is in the process of becoming ‘nomadic’, in its spirit, first of all, and more and more in actual fact. This ‘object’ you see could indeed be a shell that the waves will carry off and deposit elsewhere, just as it can also be a transformed tent, or a ship, as we said before.

I’ve always thought that the contemporary – that is, an element that imposes itself on the creation of recent works in the world – is the privilege we confer more and more on the impermanent. And the impermanent is the essential characteristic of nomadism.Be careful, though: I’m not saying this wonderful construction we are discussing will, with the wave of a magic wand from the Thousand and One Nights, fly off into the sky and disappear! It is made of steel, which I saw before it was clothed in dream. It will last.

But it has such poetry and spirituality that by sheltering us, it makes us dream, and especially travel. When you’re inside it you readily sense that what we call terra firmais in fact nothing but a ball launched into the universe. The Earth we inhabit is an adventuresome, restless planet, without any fixed point on which to land, and on this cosmic ground Hadid sets up her tents, works that, although seemingly immobile, are cosmic, having begun the adventure of Being, so that the essentially nomadic creatures we are can remember every instant that immobility is only one station of mobility, that we are all on a collective journey towards a forever unknown destination.

Translated from the French by Charlotte Mandell.

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THE HERMITAGE REMEMBERS HER AND WILL NEVER FORGET

Dr. Mikhail Piotrovsky

Zaha as a person was charming, full of confidence and strength. The lines of her architecture were simultaneously weightless and firmly attached to the ground. It was a wonderful experience to listen to her talk, but even better to talk with her. I remember once talking with her and Tom Krens, then Director of the Guggenheim Museum, on the roof of his apartment in Manhattan. The two of us tried to explain to him the core of the Palestinian problem as seen from the point of view of the Palestinians – she as an Arab Muslim and I as an Arabist who had spent a lot of time in the Middle East. In front of us the beautiful towers of the World Trade Center sparkled in the moonlight. It was the tenth of September 2001. The following morning, the problems of the Middle East were illustrated more forcefully.

It was amazing how Zaha managed to combine the most striking characteristics of a citizen of Beirut and of a Londoner in the most natural way, with no hint of hypocrisy. She had both Arab impulsiveness and the tough decisiveness of an Englishwoman.

She talked a lot about her love for the Russian Suprematists, and her early designs in London were an amazing spatial transformation of Malevich’s compositions. If you look closely at her most famous projects, you can still see a magical connection. She could be said to have created the next stage of the artistic exploration of space after Malevich. Her work has similarities to ‘Russian Cosmism’, which has been described as a study of ‘the perspectives of harmonious development of ‘Spiritual man’ and ‘Spiritual ethnos’ as a conscious creator of the State of Light into the territory of the Solar System’. Be that as it may, Russian culture was always attractive to her, and in Russia she is always loved. Incidentally, she was one of the few international star architects to work successfully in Russia.

In 2004, Zaha was awarded the famous Pritzker Prize for architecture. The organising committee suggested that the award ceremony should be held at the Hermitage and we agreed. Zaha was very pleased. So many people came that they filled not only the auditorium of the Hermitage’s 18th-century theatre, but also every inch of the stage. It was a spectacular performance, reflecting the importance of architecture to our city.

At first sight, Zaha’s architecture may look astonishing and amusing but hardly functional. But this isn’t true. I discovered this when I was on the jury to select an architect for the new museum in Vilnius. The competition was strong, with many well-known architects presenting very attractive designs, but it was Zaha’s project more than any other that took into account the life of the museum, the need to combine exhibition halls with storage facilities, lecture rooms and free passageways. She won the competition and it’s a great shame that the museum was never built.

All architects can speak well about their work, but Zaha had the talent to speak truly inspirationally about her projects. At an architectural congress in Istanbul I witnessed the rapt attention of the huge audience of young architects. They listened with open mouths and delight in their eyes – especially the girls. Before them stood the fulfilment of their every dream. And as she moved from architecture to the fields of industrial design and fashion, appearing to stray into the impossible, the unreal and the unthinkable, their amazement only grew.

Ten years after the Pritzker Prize at the Hermitage we achieved what we had long dreamed of – a retrospective exhibition of Zaha’s work. She personally designed and laid it out. Without her involvement and her very positive decision making, there would have been no exhibition. And without her personal contribution to the construction of the exhibition it would not have looked so stunning. The Nicholas Hall of the Winter Palace was filled with large cosmic structures and amazing models that gave a visual account of how architectural ideas are born and develop. It was a world where, next to drawings of cities, there were sketches of cars, shoes, furniture, dishes. . . Strange shapes hovered in the air. And at the entrance, visitors were greeted by Malevich’s Black Square, a painting that she greatly loved. She attended the opening, surrounded by love and respect, and expressed her satisfaction with the museum and the museum spaces.

No-one knew that this would be her last retrospective. We will never again see this impetuous figure, this amazing woman with piercing eyes, standing beside her buildings floating in the air. But as we look at her work, we know that her name will not be forgotten. She is a symbol of our century.

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ZAHA HADID ( 1950–2016)BIOGRAPHY

Zaha Hadid, founder of Zaha Hadid Architects, was awarded the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 2004 and is internationally known for her built, theoretical and academic work. Each of her projects expands upon over thirty years of exploration and research in the interrelated fields of urbanism, architecture and design.

Born in Baghdad, Iraq in 1950, Hadid studied mathematics at the American University of Beirut before moving to London in 1972 to attend the Architectural Association (AA) School where she was awarded the Diploma Prize in 1977. Hadid founded Zaha Hadid Architects (first called Office of Zaha Hadid) in 1979 and completed her first building, the Vitra Fire Station (Germany) in 1993.

Hadid taught at the AA School until 1987 and had since held numerous chairs and guest professorships at universities around the world including Columbia, Harvard, Yale and the University of Applied Arts in Vienna.

Working with senior office partner, Patrik Schumacher (now Principal), Hadid’s interest laid in the rigorous interface between architecture, urbanism, landscape and geology as her practice integrates natural topography and human-made systems, leading to innovation with new technologies.

The MAXXI: Italian National Museum of 21st Century Arts in Rome, the London Aquatics Centre for the 2012 Olympic Games and the Heydar Aliyev Centre in Baku are built manifestos of Hadid’s quest for complex, fluid space. Previous seminal buildings such as the Guangzhou Opera House and Contemporary Arts Centre in Cincinnati 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.

Zaha Hadid by Brigitte Lacombe

The practice recently completed the Oxford University’s Middle East Centre at St Antony’s College and is currently working on a diversity of projects worldwide including the new Beijing Airport Terminal Building in Daxing, China; the Sleuk Rith Institute in Phnom Penh, Cambodia; and 520 West 28th Street in New York. Zaha Hadid Architects’ portfolio also includes cultural, corporate, academic, sporting and infrastructure projects across Asia, the Middle East, Europe and the Americas, in addition to national institutions such as the Central Bank of Iraq and the Grand Theatre de Rabat.

Zaha Hadid’s work of the past 30 years was the subject of critically-acclaimed exhibitions at New York’s Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (2006), London’s Design Museum (2007), the Palazzo della Ragione, Padua, Italy (2009), the Philadelphia Museum of Art (2011), the DAC Copenhagen (2013) and the State Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg (2015). Her recently completed projects include the Messner Mountain Museum Corones (2015), Oxford University’s Middle East Centre (2015), Sky SOHO in Shanghai (2014), Innovation Tower at Hong Kong Polytechnic University (2014), Dongdaemun Design Plaza in Seoul (2014), Heydar Aliyev Centre in Baku (2013), Serpentine Sackler Gallery in London (2013), Library & Learning Centre in Vienna (2013), Eli & Edythe Broad Art Museum in Michigan (2012), Galaxy SOHO in Beijing (2012), Pierresvives Library and Archive in Montpellier (2012), CMA CGM Head Office Tower in Marseille (2011), London Aquatics Centre (2011), Riverside Museum in Glasgow (2011), Guangzhou Opera House (2010), Sheikh Zayed Bridge in Abu Dhabi (2010) and the MAXXI Museum in Rome (2010).

Hadid’s outstanding contribution to the architectural profession continues to be acknowledged by the world’s most respected institutions including the Forbes List of the ‘World’s Most Powerful Women’ and the Japan Art Association presenting her with the ‘Praemium Imperiale’. In 2010 and 2011, her designs were awarded the Stirling Prize, one of architecture’s highest accolades, by the Royal Institute of British Architects. Other awards include UNESCO naming Hadid as an ‘Artist for Peace’, the Republic of France honouring Hadid with the ‘Commandeur de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres’ and TIME magazine included her in their list of the ‘100 Most Influential People in the World’. In 2012, Zaha Hadid was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II, and in February 2016, she received the Royal Gold Medal.

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Patrik Schumacher (b. 1961, Bonn, Germany) is Principal of Zaha Hadid Architects and is leading the firm since Zaha Hadid’s passing in April 2016. He joined Zaha Hadid in 1988, has been a co-author on most projects and was seminal in developing Zaha Hadid Architects to become a 400 strong global architecture and design brand. In 1996 he founded the Design Research Laboratory at the Architectural Association where he continues to teach. He is lecturing worldwide and recently held the John Portman Chair in Architecture at Harvard’s GSD. Over the last 20 years he has contributed over 100 articles to architectural journals and anthologies. In 2008 he coined the phrase ‘Parametricism’ and has since published a series of manifestos promoting Parametricism as the new epochal style for the 21st century. In 2010/2012 he published his two-volume theoretical opus magnum ‘The Autopoiesis of Architecture’. He recently guest-edited the magazine AD – Parametricism 2.0 – setting architecture’s agenda for the 21st century with a new emphasis on the societal relevance of parametricism.

Shumon Basar (b. 1974, Pabna, Bangladesh) is a writer, thinker and cultural critic. He is a co-author of The Age of Earthquakes: A Guide to the Extreme Present with Douglas Coupland and Hans Ulrich Obrist. His edited books include Drone Fiction, The World of Madelon Vriesendorp, Cities from Zero and Did Someone Say Participate? Basar is Commissioner of the Global Art Forum in Dubai; Editor-at-Large at Tank magazine and a Contributing Editor to Bidoun magazine; Director of the Format programme at the Architectural Association, London; and a founding member of Fondazione Prada’s Thought Council. He studied architecture at the University of Cambridge and the Architectural Association. Between 1996 and 1999, he worked at the then-named Office of Zaha Hadid.

Mikhail Borisovich Piotrovski was born in Yerevan in 1944. He was brought up in St. Petersburg (Leningrad), where he spent many hours in the Hermitage as a child and studied in the Museum’s school of art history. In 1967, he graduated with honours from the Oriental Faculty of Leningrad State University, specialising in Arabic Studies. He also attended Cairo University from 1965 to 1966. He entered the Leningrad branch of the Institute for Oriental Studies as a research assistant in 1967, obtained a doctorate in history, and worked there until 1991. Following his father’s death he was invited, in 1991, to join the Hermitage staff as the First Deputy Director. In July 1992, he was appointed Director of the Museum by a decree of the Prime Minister.

Dr. Piotrovski is a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Academy of Arts, a member of the President’s Council on Culture and his Council on Science, and a professor of St. Petersburg State University where he is the Dean of the Oriental faculty. He has been awarded honours by many countries, including the Netherlands Order of Orange-Nassau, the Russian Order of Honour and the French Order of the Légion d’Honneur.

In 1997, a minor planet was named ‘Piotrovski’ by the Astronomical Union in joint honour of Mikhail Borisovich Piotrovski and his father Boris Borisovich Piotrovski.

AUTHORS’ BIOGRAPHIES Etel Adnan (b. 1925, Beirut, Lebanon) is a poet, essayist and visual artist who divides her time between Lebanon, France and the USA. She retired from a permanent teaching position in the late 1970s and now devotes herself to her art and writing. A powerful voice in feminist and anti-war movements, Adnan has published several works of poetry and fiction, among which are Sitt Marie Rose (1978), Sitt Marie Rose (1978), Sitt Marie Rose The Arab Apocalypse (1989) and The Arab Apocalypse (1989) and The Arab Apocalypse Master of the Eclipse (2009). Adnan’s artworks feature in numerous collections, including the Centre Eclipse (2009). Adnan’s artworks feature in numerous collections, including the Centre EclipsePompidou, Paris; Mathaf, Doha, Qatar; Royal Jordanian Museum; Tunis Modern Art Museum; Sursock Museum, Beirut; Institut du Monde Arabe, Paris; British Museum, London; World Bank Collection, Washington D.C.; National Museum for Women in the Arts, Washington D.C. In 2014, Adnan was awarded France’s highest cultural honour, the Ordre de Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres. Adnan’s recent exhibitions include Serpentine Galleries, London (2016); IMMA, Dublin (2015); Haus Konstruktiv, Zürich (2015); Museum der Moderne Salzburg (2014); Mathaf, Arab Museum of Modern Art, Doha (2014); Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, San Francisco (2013).

Detlef Mertins (1954 – 2011) was a German architect, professor and a prodigious writer who made lasting contributions to the theory and history of modernism in architecture, art, philosophy, and urbanism. Mertins studied architecture in Toronto, then received a PhD from Princeton University. After teaching at the University of Toronto for ten years, he moved in 2002 to Philadelphia, where he was Professor of Architecture and Chair of the Department of Architecture at Penn University. He also taught at the University of Toronto and, as a visiting professor, at Columbia University, Harvard University, Princeton University and Rice University. Among his many published books are Modernity Unbound (2011); Unbound (2011); Unbound G: An Avant-Garde Journal of Art, Architecture, Design, and Film, 1923 – 1926 (2010), G: An Avant-Garde Journal of Art, Architecture, Design, and Film, 1923 – 1926 (2010), G: An Avant-Garde Journal of Art, Architecture, Design, and Film, 1923 – 1926co-edited with Michael Jennings; The Presence of Mies (1994) and Metropolitan Mutations: The Architecture of Emerging Public Spaces (1989). Mertins is well-known for his essays on the history of modernism, featured in Mies in Berlin, Mies in America, NOX: Machining Architecture, and Phylogenesis: FOA’s Ark.

IN PARTNERSHIP WITH SWAROVSKI THE SERPENTINE GALLERIES PRESENTS A NEW EXHIBITION OF ZAHA HADID WORKS

Zaha Hadid at the launch of ‘Prima’ at the Fire Station, Vitra Design Museum, Germany, 2013

London, December 7, 2016 – This winter, the Serpentine Sackler Gallery will show Zaha Hadid: Early Paintings and Drawings (8 December 2016 – 12 February 2017), in partnership with Swarovski.

Zaha Hadid is widely regarded as a pioneering and visionary architect whose contribution to the world of

architecture was ground-breaking. The Serpentine Galleries presentation, in partnership with Swarovski, will

reveal her as an artist with drawing at the very heart of her work, and will include the architect’s calligraphic

drawings and rarely seen private notebooks with sketches that show her complex thoughts about architectural

forms and their relationships. The show will focus on Hadid’s early works before her first building was erected in

1993 (Vitra Fire Station in Germany) and present her paintings and drawings from the 1970s to the early 1990s.

Nadja Swarovski, Member of the Swarovski Executive Board, said: “We are pleased to partner with the

Serpentine Galleries for this exhibition. Swarovski was honoured to collaborate with Zaha for over a decade,

creating an incredible body of work which ranged from lighting installations to sculpture, jewelry and home décor.

Her vision always pushed us outside our comfort zone, and the results were breathtaking. I feel extremely

privileged to have known her both as a friend and as a creative collaborator.”

‘Light Sculpture’ 2008; ‘Celeste’ Runaway Rocks 2008

For more than a decade Swarovski partnered with Zaha Hadid on numerous projects. In 2007 Swarovski and

Hadid worked together on 'Fade’, a sculpture presented in the gardens of the Serpentine Galleries to celebrate

the launch of the new pavilion, also designed by Hadid; then again in 2008 on body jewelry for Runway Rocks

and the stunning ‘Light Sculpture’ chandelier at Salone del Mobile as part of Swarovski Crystal Palace; and in

2013 on ‘Prima’, an outdoor installation and table-top collection to celebrate the 20th anniversary of her Fire

Station building at Vitra Design Museum, Weil am Rhein, Germany.

‘Crista’ by Zaha Hadid for Ateleier Swarovski Home, 2016

Following her incredible ‘Glace’ jewelry collection, comprising crystals suspended in sculptural resin forms

created for Atelier Swarovski in 2007, Hadid created a dramatic centrepiece for the debut Atelier Swarovski

Home collection, launched in early 2016.

'Crista’ features 24-karat gold-plated metal sections handcrafted in London and crystal branches cut at

Swarovski's factory in Austria, which uses Swarovski’s innovative Wave Cut technology allowing curved forms to

be cut in crystal for the first time. Sweeping and architectural, it is a true reflection of Zaha’s pioneering spirit and

visionary design aesthetic.

Working with a select group of designers, Atelier Swarovski Home, which launched earlier this year at Salone del

Mobile, translates the forward-thinking design DNA and technical expertise of the crystal brand into a collection of

covetable table top objects and home accessories.

‘Glace’ Atelier Swarovski jewelry collection, 2010

Nadja Swarovski, Member of the Swarovski Executive Board, added: “Zaha Hadid’s lifetime of work speaks

for itself. Its voice is as dynamic, singular and unashamedly powerful and feminine as she was. Zaha was first

and foremost a true artist and a multidisciplinary talent whose work spanned many fields and touched many lives.

She leaves an enduring aesthetic legacy.”

‘Prima’ Table top objects, 2013

Zaha Hadid: Early Paintings and Drawings will be at the Serpentine Sackler Gallery, 8 December 2016 – 12 February 2017.

‘Fade’ Serpentine Gallery, 2007

Location: Serpentine Sackler Gallery, West Carriage Drive, Kensington Gardens, London W2 2AR

For more information please contact:

Camron PR: Judy.Dobias@camronpr.com, +44 (0)20 7 420 1702

Katie.Richardson@camronpr.com, +44 (0) 20 7420 1700

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Press images at serpentinegalleries.org/press Swarovski Swarovski delivers a diverse portfolio of unmatched quality, craftsmanship, and creativity. Founded in 1895 in Austria, Swarovski designs, manufactures and markets high-quality crystals, genuine gemstones and created stones as well as finished products such as jewelry, accessories and lighting. Now run by the fifth generation of family members, Swarovski Crystal Business has a global reach with approximately 2,560 stores in around 170 countries, more than 25,000 employees, and revenue of about 2.33 billion euros in 2014. Together with its sister companies Swarovski Optik (optical devices) and Tyrolit (abrasives), Swarovski Crystal Business forms the Swarovski Group. In 2014, the Group generated revenue of about 3.05 billion euros and employed more than 30,000 people. The Swarovski Foundation was set up in 2012 to honor the philanthropic spirit of founder Daniel Swarovski. Its mission is to support creativity and culture, promote wellbeing, and conserve natural resources. www.swarovskigroup.com Atelier Swarovski Atelier Swarovski offers cutting edge jewelry, accessories and home décor items which are the ultimate expression of Swarovski crystal. Pushing the boundaries of creativity, it collaborates with the finest talents in the world across fashion, jewelry, architecture and design. Atelier Swarovski presents seasonal jewelry and accessories collaborations twice a year during New York, London and Paris fashion weeks alongside its constantly evolving Core Collection. Atelier Swarovski Home, launched at Milan Design Week in April 2016, consists of functional and decorative objects for the home. Atelier Swarovski was founded by Nadja Swarovski in 2007 as a showcase for creativity, craftsmanship and the art of crystal cutting and crystal innovations. Past collaborators include Jean Paul Gaultier, Viktor&Rolf, Christopher Kane, Maison Margiela and Mary Katranzou for jewelry, and Zaha Hadid, Daniel Libeskind and Ron Arad for home décor. www.atelierswarovski.com

Zaha Hadid Born in Baghdad, Zaha Hadid (1950-2016) studied mathematics at the American University of Beirut before studying architecture 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). Hadid was a Pritzker Laureate and had recently received the RIBA Gold Medal. Her first realised building was the Vitra Fire Station in Weil am Rhein, Germany, in 1993. HISTORY OF COLLABORATIONS – Swarovski & Zaha Hadid: 2007: ‘Fade’, Serpentine Gallery Fade was exhibited at the Serpentine Gallery in Kensington Gardens, London in 2007, alongside other chandeliers from the Swarovski Crystal Palace collection. The design is drawn from the primary elements: gradient effects and interlacing networks. The monumental chandelier, which was a temporary installation in the Serpentine Gardens, was partially buried in the landscape, hiding from sight the compression element which allows the chandelier to maintain its shape. 2008: ‘Light Sculpture’ by Zaha Hadid, Salone del Mobile Light Sculpture reimagines the chandelier as part of the Swarovski Crystal Palace collection. Ever pushing boundaries and challenging preconceived notions about the chandelier, Hadid drew inspiration from nanotechnology and self-organizing systems, using 2,700 internally lit crystals to create her spiralling vortex of light. The chandelier relates to—and interacts with—each new environment in a unique manner, constantly reinventing itself and offering exciting new possibilities. 2008: Swarovski Runway Rocks This unique jewellery piece for Swarovski Runway Rocks is an obvious interpretation of the architectural language pursued by Zaha Hadid Soft curves arise from the torso to create a dynamic form that wraps around the neck coming to rest on the shoulder eventually flowing down the arm to tentatively rest on the finger. The sculptural sensibility of the pieces is strongly accentuated by the use of sterling silver that brings to life the rhythm of folds and protrusions. 2010: ‘Glace’ Collection for Atelier Swarovski Zaha Hadid’s distinctive style is reflected in the organic, fluid shapes of her debut jewellery collection for Atelier Swarovski. Expertly designed to be worn individually and sculpted so they complement each other when worn together, the bracelets, necklaces and rings feature colourful crystals suspended in clear resin. Each piece was available as one of 50 in this exclusive collection. 2013: ‘Prima’ by Zaha Hadid for Swarovski To commemorate the 20th anniversary of Zaha Hadid’s first installation—the Fire Station at Vitra Campus—Swarovski commissioned Hadid to create something spectacular. Entitled “Prima,” the installation uses advanced design technologies to translate the two-dimensional lines of a canvas drawing into a work of multidimensional art. Its five highly polished components can be moved into different configurations to create seating for visitors. Awe-inspiring and unique, the installation recalls the dynamism of Zaha’s original drawings for the Vitra Fire Station. 2016: ‘Crista’ by Zaha Hadid for Atelier Swarovski Home Crista is a dramatic centerpiece, created for the debut Atelier Swarovski Home collection, which takes as its starting point an investigation into the process of crystallization occurring in nature. Crista features 24 carat gold-plated metal sections handcrafted in London and crystal branches, which were cut at Swarovski's factory in Austria using the crystal brand’s innovative Wave Cut technology, a process that allows curved faceted forms to be cut in crystal.

Press Release SERPENTINE GALLERIES, ZAHA HADID DESIGN AND DE PURY ANNOUNCE A NEW COLLABORATION FOR THE SERPENTINE SHOP TO ACCOMPANY ZAHA HADID EXHIBITION 8 DECEMBER 2016 – 12 FEBRUARY 2017 SERPENTINE SACKLER GALLERY

To further demonstrate Zaha Hadid’s extraordinary range of talents, the Serpentine and Zaha Hadid Design have partnered with de Pury to showcase the architect’s prolific design output. The shop at the Serpentine Sackler Gallery has been given over in its entirety for the duration of the exhibition to products designed by Hadid, ranging from a liquid dining table and contoured tableware to gravity-defying platform shoes and limited edition lithographs.

The collection of objects, Limited Edition Prints, and books by the pioneering and visionary architect Zaha Hadid will be on display from 7 December in a newly refitted Serpentine Sackler Gallery Shop alongside the exhibition Zaha Hadid: Early Paintings and Drawings, running until 12 February 2017.

The selection, presented at the Serpentine Shop and online is a unique opportunity for art lovers to acquire a variety of products created by the legendary architect and selected objects created with her many collaborators.

“This wide-ranging and inspiring selection of objects and collaborations for the Serpentine Shop reveals Hadid’s extraordinary range as artist, designer and architect.” Yana Peel, CEO and Hans Ulrich Obrist, Artistic Director, Serpentine Galleries.

“We are absolutely thrilled to collaborate with the Serpentine and to start with the stunning variety of objects and pieces of furniture that Zaha Hadid has created. We are great admirers of what Hans Ulrich Obrist has achieved over the years and equally excited by the extraordinary energy created by Yana Peel, CEO of Serpentine" Simon de Pury

All items are available to order at de-pury.com

For press information contact: press@serpentinegalleries.org, Serpentine Gallery, Kensington Gardens, London W2 3XA Serpentine Sackler Gallery, West Carriage Drive, Kensington Gardens, London W2 2AR