Zaha Hadid's Paintings, Imagining Architecture (original) (raw)
Open Journal of Architectural Design Zaha Hadid's Techniques of Architectural Form-Making
The dramatic changes in today"s architecture are inevitable consequences of the sweeping technological advances of the 21 st century. Zaha Hadid is one of the prominent architects who have contributed on conceiving unprecedented, innovative architecture. Generations eager for creativity from among architectural students, architects and products" designers who admire her designs find it difficult to determine the underlying reason for the uniqueness of her works. Although, there is a notable interest in different media for her works, there is no equivalent reaction in the academic field on the systematic analysis for her techniques in designing architectural form. Therefore, this study"s aims are to find out these techniques and to investigate the underlying cause for her works distinctiveness from her other colleagues in architecture. A content analysis is conducted on Hadid"s words in texts and videos of her accessible interviews in internet, books and magazine to accomplish study"s aims as well as to find out how these techniques were applied in regard to the general conception of her projects. The study resulted in exposing the six techniques she uses to design the architectural form which are abstraction and fragmentation; idea of the ground and gravity; landscaping project and the surrounding context; Layering; play of light; seamlessness and fluidity. Moreover, the authors refer her works" uniqueness to employing contradiction principle through these techniques.
Zaha Hadid: Between the Visionary and the Pragmatic
Project Baikal, 2017
Despite the untimely death of its founder and leader, Zaha Hadid Architects remains one of the most active studios in London, producing designs all over the world. But in the early 1990s, when this interview was being held in her studio on 10 Bowling Green Lane in London, Zaha Hadid was mostly famous for her ‘quazi visionist’ projects with magnificent presentations that resemble abstract works by Kandinsky and Malevich rather than architectural designs of buildings and complexes… Since the establishment of partnership between Hadid and Patrik Schumacher, the studio had focused on computer and parametric planning strategies. The Parametricist Manifesto (2008) became the culmination of that direction. The parametric design guides Zaha toward searching for new relations between architecture and modeling of forms of field conditions, force lines and fluid processes in nature. Computer mathematics models evolutionary processes of the occurrence of natural forms in the living and non-livi...
Zaha Hadid’s Center for Contemporary Art and the perils of new museum architecture
Architectural Research Quarterly, 2019
As epitomised in the works of Renzo Piano, Frank Gehry, and Daniel Libeskind, the ‘new museum’ of art claims its own architectural typology. With asymmetrical silhouettes, gallery spaces that eschew the much derided ‘white cube’, and cleverly conceived circulation systems, the new museum has been heralded as revolutionising the display of art. Yet its function extends beyond the display and conservation of art. The new art museum is conceived as a multifaceted cultural centre – a public forum – where art and culture are democratised, and families, scholars, students, tourists, and teachers come together. At the same time, the new museum competes with other entertainment venues on a commercial level. As a cultural factory replete with an ambitious programme of temporary exhibitions, media facilities, restaurants, and shops, the new museum emphasises consumption as much as it does contemplation. In fact, the array of non-artrelated diversions contained in the new museum is often more ...
RE-THINKING ART AND ARCHITECTURE: AN INTERDISCIPLINARY EXPERIENCE
In creative thinking, just as in architectural thinking, the context provides the necessary paths for the design. That said, conceptual thinking and theoretical ideas provide more than a mere context for architectural design, in that they help the architect make order out of chaos and create a pattern of order through their intuition and expressions of a culture. Within this explosion of creativity, art can help in the exploration of new means of expression, new materials and new forms, and in this sense, can enhance creative approaches in architectural education and architectural design. Since architecture as a discipline is about the creation and production of space, it has inherent spatial, social and cultural bonds, and as such, is a representation of values, meanings and identities. The concept of representation assumes many meanings. Represent as a noun is picture or sign, while to represent is to convey, to express, to correspond to. 1 In Lefebvre's model, the process of representation is defined according to three concepts or interrelated modes, being spatial practices; representations of space; and spaces of representation. Spatial practices can refer to social space that embraces the production and reproduction of social practices in particular locations. It embodies a close association within a perceived space between daily reality (daily routine) and urban reality (the routes and networks that link the places of work, 'private' life and leisure). 2 Representations of space refer to the conceptualized space that leans towards a system of verbal (and therefore intellectually worked out) signs, 3 and this is the dominant space in any society. Representational space is lived directly through its associated images and symbols, and hence the space of 'inhabitants' and 'users', and tends towards coherent systems of non-verbal symbols in the form of signs and codes that overlay physical space, making symbolic use of its objects. 4 In this regard, architecture is a continuous act involving the taking possession, to some degree, of the abstraction of codes, signs and meanings. It mingles with art in a bid to be creative, to be different, and to be new and unique. Just as art, in itself, it is an attempt to bring order out of chaos, the principles of art help architecture not to portray , but to evoke the ideas lost within the chaos of daily life. Accordingly, it focuses on the abstract world of art to realize the truth, and in this respect, architecture is about combining the rational and the irrational. In this sense, space is not only a rational entity, nor is it something that exists at the level of the surfaces that define architecture, or a physical entity that can be measured by dimensions. It is about creating something rational out of many irrational relations and inputs, and about the meanings attributed to spaces within the system of spatial relations within the built environment. Since it is about the patterns of lifestyle, culture, tradition, individuals, beliefs and values, it can be considered intangible, meaningful, conceptual , perceptual and cognitive. In this regard, space is not something confined solely to architecture, being constituted out of some social, cultural, mental and physical processes. It is about the spatial practices, both rational and irrational, that give meaning to a place, which is why architecture is always in search of the genius loci. " How spatial organisation in some sense is a product of social structure " , " how space is socially produced and reproduced " and " how social relations are spatially produced? " have emerged as the most important discussions related to spatial theory over last two decades, having highlighted the significance of space and time as an associate entity rather than two distinct subjects. Studies of time-space relationships in several disciplines, but especially those of geography and history, have begun to emphasize the significance of both spatial and temporal dimensions in social theory, and in this respect, any conceptual framework for understanding spatial consciousness can only be constructed by exploring the relationships between social processes and spatial form. Having roots in ancient history, architecture as a discipline has always been about form, space and order, although the method of designing and producing form differs totally between the ancient and modern times. Form no more follows function, nor is it produced for a specific function. Instead, it is produced in line with the symbolic and conceptual meanings attributed to the form based on a specific social activity. Accordingly, it can be argued that each form of social activity defines its space, meaning that social space is made up of a complex network of individual feelings and images about and reactions towards the spatial symbolism that surrounds the individual. 5 Social space changes with changing social relationships, mental images and the spatial behaviours of individuals in everyday life, and is therefore complex, heterogeneous and perhaps discontinuous, but totally different from the physical space. 6 As a result, we can say that architecture is a social art, and so to understand the spatial form of a building or a city it is necessary to define the social space with reference to some social activity with the symbolic qualities of that form. Yet form is a narrative of meanings generated through explorations of programmes and uses of space, being sometimes decomposition of meanings, and at others, a re-composition of meanings driven from history at different times, like a juxtaposition of layers of a different context. The desire is not for architecture that communicates directly one meaning, but rather for material and spatial forms that produce multiple associations and ambiguous situations. 7 4 3
The deconstructivist thoughts of the early 1980s architecture were carried out by architects who believe in change, possibility, and limitlessness. Their rebellion to what is conventional has fundamentally contributed in formulating the 21st century architecture where one of the key differences between them and others is the methodology of design. This paper addresses Zaha Hadid’s strategy as a significant pioneer in this movement who has large followership around the world from among architects and designers. A qualitative study is conducted using content analysis for her accessible texts and videos as a reliable source of data. Hadid’s sequential procedures of design imply that she perceives architecture as an art which could be sufficiently employed to fulfill the requirements of a good architecture and clientele