Zaha Hadid

HOTEL PUERTA AMERICA

PROGRAM:
Interior for one floor of the hotel (28 standard rooms,
2 suites & common area)

CLIENT:
Grupo Urvasco, Madrid, Spain

SIZE:
1200 m²

CONCEPT:
The Client allowed us full autonomy, the brief – to design a floor of a hotel comprising 30 rooms and all common parts. The objective, to ensure a dynamic and customized project. We took the opportunity to create a new domestic language of architecture, driven by new developments in digital design and enhanced manufacturing capabilities. This new dialogue emphasises the complex and continuous nature of the design and the merging of disparate forms and texture. In the rooms floor, wall and furniture are all one continuous surface or skin, making them pieces of art. Every single element – the walls, bedroom door with its LED signs, sliding door to the bathroom, bathtub and vanity unit, bed, shelves, chair and a cantilevered bench by the window which doubles up as a table – is rounded in a single curved sweep.

MOONSOON RESTAURANT

PROGRAM:
Restaurant installation design

CLIENT:
JASMAC Corporation

SIZE:
435 m²

CONCEPT:
For a two-fold programme of formal eating and relaxed lounging an opposition of moods was created. The result is two synthetic and strange worlds: fire and ice. Inspired by the seasonal ice buildings of Sapporo, the ground floor features cool-greys materialised in glass and metal. Tables are sharp fragments of ice: a raised floor level drifts like an iceberg across the space. Above the ice chamber whirls a furnace of fire, rendered in searing reds, brilliant yellows and exuberant oranges. A spiral above the bar tears through the ground-floor ceiling, curling up to the underside of the upper-level dome like a fiery tornado bursting through a pressure vessel. A plasma of biomorphic sofas accommodates eating and lounging and allows an infinite configuration of seating types with movable trays and plug-in sofa backs.

ART BORDERS WALLPAPER

PROGRAM:
Wallpaper Design

CLIENT:
Marburg Wallcoverings

CONCEPT:
Zaha Hadid has designed four collections for leading wall-covering innovator, Marburg Wallcoverings as part of the exclusive ART BORDERS series. With over a century of experience developing and creating contemporary wallpapers within its own factory, Marburg’s dedication to quality and constant reinvention remains the driving principle of the company. This highly anticipated collaboration with Zaha Hadid proves an exciting pairing of technical innovation and artistic vision. Launched during industry pacesetter Heimtextil Fair in January 2010, the collections by Zaha Hadid defy convention in their vivid amplified spatiality and fluidity. Unique signature designs, 9m in width and 3.3m in height, set rooms in motion, multiplying and compressing space. Complimentary drawings, with no definitive beginning nor end, dematerialize walls into endless canvases of dynamic visualizations of great depth.

Four signature designs and corresponding repeats were created by Zaha Hadid for Marburg. They are available in a variety of contemporary, specially designed colourways:

ELASTIKA
A layered and highly tensioned composition of infinite spatiality. In addition to the signature design, Elastika has two repeat designs: a single layer and a multiple layered version.
Colour spectrum: Iridescent berry tones combined with silver, matte black and gray, mother of pearl white on white, iridescent copper hues and a deep metallic forest green.

STRIA
A bold, graphic design creating the effect of striated undulating ribbons emerging from the wall.
Colour spectrum: silver and black and numerous shades of gray and silver.

SWIRL
Setting the wall into motion through endless swelling, merging and weaving.
Colour spectrum: warm reds, cool silver-gray, and iridescent petrol.

CELLULAR
An explosion is suspended into an infinite lattice of voids and thrown into relief. The corresponding repeat creates the effect of a lattice or polished pebbles.
Colour spectrum: cool white, black and silver.

CANVAS TV MOBILE STUDIO FOR THE SERPENTINE GALLERY SUMMER PARTY

PROGRAM:
Portable studio and sculpture

CLIENT:
Canvas TV

CONCEPT:
The project for Canvas TV extends Zaha Hadid Architects’ exploration of seamless fluidity into the constantly evolving world of branding. The undulating elastic surface, with its combination of convex, concave, soft and hard continuous edges, defines a dynamic form that simultaneously exists across all scales. It is a visionary artistic signature that invites a unique spatial interaction.

AURA L & AURA S
AT THE VILLA FOSCARI LA MALCONTENTA

PROGRAM:
‘Andrea Palladio & Contemporary Architects’, Zaha Hadid
and Patrik Schumacher, La Biennale di Venezia

CLIENT:
Fondazione La Malcontenta

CURATOR:
Giulia Foscari W.R.

MATERIALS:
Lacquered fibreglass with embedded steel frame;
Core material: PU-Foam RG100 and Polystyrene EPS 20 milled parts coated with PU-SB1.
Ed. 1/1

SIZES:
6 x 3 x 2.45 m

CONCEPT:
The architecture of Andrea Palladio represents the built manifestation of Palladio’s utopia of synthesizing all humanistic values by establishing the exact role and relation of each part of his architectural compositions – from the organism as a perfect whole to each single room. The proportion of each room is in fact determined by a specific set of ‘harmonic’ relations that derive from the Euclidian mathematics practiced in the 16th Century. Zaha Hadid and Patrik Schumacher – when invited to initiate a dialogue between contemporary architects and Palladio in occasion of the 500th anniversary of Palladio’s birth – focused their study on one room, conscious that exploring the logic and relational system of a single room they would have addressed and captured the essence of Palladio’s architectural theory. Villa Foscari La Malcontenta, a building designed by Palladio in 1555 for a site along the Brenta River, represents the ideal setting for this exploration as it was conceived and built by Palladio as a manifesto to demonstrate the perfection of his architectural theories to the Serenissima Republic of Venice.

The proportions of the rooms of the piano nobile of La Malcontenta thus constitute the starting point for Zaha Hadid and Patrik Schumacher’s study. The frequency curves generated by the harmonic proportional system of the villa are progressively transformed, through mathematical algorithms, to define a genotypic elementary form that contains in its DNA the whole Palladian set of rules. As a result of this experimentation, multiple complex spatial environments are generated through lawful variations of Palladio’s classical proportions.

Giulia Foscari, exhibition curator

ICONE BAG

PROGRAM:
Product Design

CLIENT:
Louis Vuitton
2, Rue Du Pont-Neuf
75034 Paris
France

CONCEPT:
The opportunities of reinterpretation of the iconic LV Bucket bag lead us to reflect on its condition as a generic container. The combination of a series of formal operations (extrusion, distortion, peeling and slicing) and the selection of materials, created a family of differentiated bags, hybrid crossings between traditional bag typologies, i.e. pochette and clutch, and the bucket.

Clustering the bags generated a series of possible relations between the different buckets, the containers and the contained, which allowed for its parts to be interchangeable under one coherent composition. The possibility of different combinations of containers, buckets, triggers a playful and interactive relationship with the user, allowing for a customization of the bucket’s form and program to each occasion.

GENESY AT ARTEMIDE EUROLUCE 2009

PROGRAM:
Double Emission Lamp: general light with florescent lamp and task light with 3×1 Watt LED

CLIENT:
Artemide

MATERIALS:
Expanded Polyurethane lacquered

DIMENSIONS:
195 x 120 x 59 cm

CONCEPT:
Zaha Hadid Architects exploration and research into systems of growth in the natural world have informed the distinct formal language of the Genesy lamp for Artemide. As in the organic development of trees, a sweeping canopy emerges through an extensive interconnected supporting network at the base. The primary components of this organic analogy are transformed from abstract diagrams into Genesy’s fluid design. The lamp’s structure increases in complexity as it rises from the floor. Like a growing organism, the central support sprouts branches that adopt a greater radial geometry to enhance the dynamic tensional forces of the structure. Nature continues to inform the design as these branches frame voids, enhancing the contrast between positive and negative, convex and concave, tension and compression. These branches follow the coherent formal logic of morphology and spring from the central structure to support the light source. The Genesy lamp epitomizes the symbiosis between the sensual fluidity of the natural world and the exacting tolerances made possible by state-of-the-art manufacturing technologies.

CIRRUS

PROGRAM:
Furniture made from Formica®
to be sold at auction benefiting the CAC’s exhibitions and education programs

CLIENT:
Lois & Richard Rosenthal Center for Contemporary Art

MATERIALS:
Laminate by Formica®, colour Black (909-90) in Polished finish, stained medium density fiberboard

SIZE:
244 x 244 x 244 cm

CONCEPT:
Zaha Hadid Architects design Cirrus was produced in collaboration with the Contemporary Arts Center and Formica Corporation. This dynamic sculpture was displayed as a part of the exhibition FORM: Contemporary Architects at Play, in Cincinnati in May 2008. A live auction will took place at which this exclusive first edition of Cirrus was sold. All proceeds from the auction went to benefit the CAC’s exhibitions and education programs.

Completed in 2003, 2008 year marks the 5th anniversary of Zaha Hadid’s seminal design for the Lois & Richard Rosenthal Center for Contemporary Art in Cincinnati. It was conceived as an Urban Carpet that draws in circulation around the suspended interlocking solids and voids of the galleries. Cirrus offers a carpet of interiority as its striated and weaved articulations unravel from the wall to the ground. The encompassed series of voids structure the sculpture, providing functional areas for sitting, leaning, lying, and reclining.

MESA FOR VITRA

PROGRAM:
Table

CLIENT:
Vitra

MATERIALS:
Polyurethane base, Fiberglass top, Metallic paint finish

DIMENSIONS:
4050 x 1650 x 700 mm

DESIGN CONCEPT:
The Mesa table evolved from an architectural experiment which was similarly to do with creating connections. Elastika was an installation created in the Moore Building in 2005 for the Miami Art Fair. The brief had been a sculptural structure to revivify the 1921building’s atrium. Zaha’s proposal was an organic set of tentacles which linked spaces and floors across the atrium, defying changing levels and criss-crossing each other in mid-air. The effect was like a huge, sticky chewing gum pulled out of shape across the interior. It is a sci-fi alien piece which transforms the heart of the building, reaching across space. It looks as if the structure was attempting to resolve itself back into a single solid.

The Mesa table takes as its starting point a similar situation. Stripping the formal idea back to its constituent parts; ground; structure; surface, the design creates a world in between the two horizontal planes, a world which becomes structure but in which the voids express the form as much as the solids.

JS BACH CHAMBER MUSIC HALL

PROGRAM:
Chamber Music Hall at Manchester Art Gallery, T1 Gallery

CLIENT:
Manchester International Festival

SIZE:
17 x 25 m

CONCEPT:
Zaha Hadid Architects have created a unique chamber music hall specially designed to house solo performances of the exquisite music of Johann Sebastian Bach. A voluminous ribbon swirls within the room, carving out a spatial and visual response to the intricate relationships of Bach’s harmonies. As the ribbon careens above the performer, cascades into the ground and wraps around the audience, the original room as a box is sculpted into fluid spaces swelling,merging, and slipping through one another.

“The design enhances the multiplicity of Bach’s work through a coherent integration of formal and structural logic. A single continuous ribbon of fabric swirls around itself, creating layered spaces to cocoon the performers and audience with in an intimate fluid space.” said Hadid.

The process of realizing the design involved architectural considerations of scale, structure and acoustics to develop a dynamic formal dialogue inseparable from its intended purpose as an intimate chamber music hall. A layering of spaces and functions is achieved through the ribbon wrapping around itself, alternately compressing to the size of a handrail then stretching to enclose the full height of the room. Circulatory and visual connections are continually discovered as one passes through the multiple layers of space delineated by the ribbon. The ribbon itself consists of a translucent fabric membrane articulated by an internal steel structure suspended from the ceiling. The surface of the fabric shell undulates in a constant but changing rhythm as it is stretched over the internal structure. It varies between the highly tensioned skin on the exterior of the ribbon and the soft billowing effect of the same fabric on the interior of the ribbon. Clear acrylic acoustic panels are suspended above the stage to reflect and disperse the sound, while remaining visually imperceptible within the fabric membrane. Programmed lighting and a series of dispersed musical recordings activate the spaces between the ribbon outside of performance times.

The installation is designed to be transportable and re-installed in other similar venues. Pivotal to its function is the performance of the ribbon. It has been designed to simultaneously enhance the acoustic experience of the concert while spatially defining a stage, an intimate enclosure, and passageways. It exists at a scale in which it is perceived as both an object floating in a room as well as a temporal architecture that invites one to enter, inhabit and explore.