Short Form Essay - Contemporary Design Issues - 1st Year

Contemporary Design Issues - Winter Semester



Zaha Hadid is an Iraq born, English trained architect famous for her Deconstructivist style of architecture. She has been widely recognised for her use of highly advanced 21st century imaging technology to depict her very organic forms, and in 2004 was the first woman to be awarded the prestigious Pritzker Prize for her contribution to the field of architecture, arguably the highest honour bestowed upon a living architect.

Hadid’s work is an organic exploration of plane, and expresses an intrinsic and raw sense of movement that builds upon itself much as melody builds upon rhythm. It has been described as ‘combin(ing) sculptural sensuality with formal logic’ (Carolyn Ford writing on Hadid’s Chanel Mobile Art Pavilion). And in a ground breaking installation at the Guggenheim Museum in New York in 1992, her contribution was described as this seamless ebb and flow of matter by architecture critic Joseph Giovanni;

“...expanding it into the third dimension, moving the parts in abstract formations, like ice flows, through the whole museum. What seemed graphically like an object emerged as a field of objects moving through the existing building, adapted to its circular geometry. The movement was fluid, and spatial: the forms dropped and rose throughout the structure.”

This description is an altogether accurate analogy of Hadid’s catalogue of work. Hadid took great influence from the work of the Suprematists school of thought, and was an avid painter, using the brush to visual form and realise her designs. But Hadid’s design philosophy was lauded not for her interpretation of Suprematist ideals (many of which belonged to her teachers and mentors) but because she constantly tested and pushed the norms for visual communication of her designs, adopting ideas not explored by her predecessors, generating the realisation of what the built form could indeed achieve.

“She often layered drawings done on sheets of transparent acrylic, creating visual narratives showing several spatial strata simultaneously... this methodology, applied in the elusive pursuit of almost intangible form, she escaped the prejudice latent in such design tools as the T-square and parallel rule... Adopting isometric and perspectival drawing techniques used by the Suprematists to achieve strangely irrational spaces that did not add up to Renaissance wholes, she entered an exploratory realm where she developed forms distorted and warped in the throes of Einsteinian space...” Joseph Giovanni, The Architecture of Zaha Hadid, Pritzker Prize Essay 2004.

Hadid’s renderings, models and sketches, had taken form away from matter, and weight away from mass. Interestingly, for the first 10 years of her architectural career, not one of her visions was built. It seemed that she was destined to be too far ahead of her time, that was, until the age of the computer. Much discussion has ensued regarding technology’s influence in Hadid’s post 1980’s work, and the effect visualisation technology had on her design style of exploring natural, dynamic, almost single surface forms. And the question to be asked, would Hadid have achieved the level of success of current, if it had not been for the computer? Patrick Schumacher, author of Digital Hadid, believes not. Schumacher argued that to reduce this new style of working as being generated by the onset of the computer, is to ignore a great many other predating advancements in methodolody and critical practise. Yet he does agree that with the onset of 3D modelling and digital rendering programs in Hadid’s work “...a new level of structural complexity, tectonic fluidity, and plastic articulation has been mastered with precision and confidence”, pp5-6.

Hadid now enjoys frequent forays across discipline, having been commissioned to design jewellery, furniture, and shoes amongst other things.


Ford, C. Chanel – Zaha Hadid http://www.pritzkerprize.com/laureates/2004/essay.html Retrieved July 9th 2004

Schumacher, P. 2004. Digital Hadid -Landscapes in Motion, Birkhäuser Basel, London.


Two Draw Cabinet
Zaha & Melissa Shoes
Cairo Expo City

Images; http://makingfurnitureinteractive.wordpress.com/2007/09/05/
http://www.stylepark.com/es/established-und-sons/swash-limited
http://www.dezeen.com/2008/10/24/melissa-shoes-by-zaha-hadid-architects/
http://www.designboom.com/weblog/cat/9/view/6666/zaha-hadid-architects-cairo-expo-city.html

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