Zaha Hadid Architects have broken ground on the construction of a new 5.5 hectare development in Bratislava, Slovakia. Known as ‘Sky Park,’ the master plan will transform an abandoned site in a formerly industrial area of the city into a 20,000-square-meter park and mixed-use community containing more than 700 apartments and 55,000 square meters of office and retail space.
Zaha Hadid Architects unveiled a new experimental structure as part of Milan’s White In The City Exhibition during the city’s annual Salone del Mobile. Held at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera in the heart of Milan’s design district, the exhibition explored the contemporary use of white color in design and architecture across various locations in the city. Named the Thallus – after the Greek word for flora that is not differentiated into stem and leaves, the sculpture is the latest in ZHA’s investigations using 3D printing technology. Thallus continues Zaha Hadid Architects’ Computational Design (ZHA CoDe) group’s research into generating geometries through robotic-assisted design.
Zaha Hadid Architects has revealed plans for a new ecologically-considered development located on a lush site along the Mayan Riviera in Mexico. Known as Alai, the complex will offer a nature-focused living experience while preserving a large portion of the forested site for species restoration.
Through a revisiting of Zaha Hadid's MAXXI Museum of Art in Rome and Heyder Aliyev Center in Baku, as well as the practice’s exploration of materiality and composition, Boffi_Code Kitchen is a custom kitchen island created by Zaha Hadid Design and Boffi, an Italian furniture company founded in 1934.
“Boffi_code offers customization to the highest standards, tailoring individual solutions with selected materials, finishes and cabinetry,” explains Zaha Hadid Design. “The Boffi_Code Kitchen by Zaha Hadid Design marries exceptional detailing and design with functionality, carefully chosen materials, and traditional craftsmanship.”
With construction now well underway on One Thousand Museum in Miami, one of Zaha Hadid's largest projects to be completed posthumously, Curbed has reported that the 62-story tower will be the subject of an upcoming Discovery/PBS documentary covering the creation of complex structures from around the world. Titled “Impossible Builds,” the program will highlight the building’s unique glass fiber reinforced concrete exoskeleton.
A simultaneous celebration of their cultural iconicity and distillation from their various contexts, Beautified China is a photographic essay by Kris Provoost (one-half of the vlogging duo behind #donotsettle) that tracks the evolution of Chinese architectural landmarks over the course of the past 7 years. Beginning his investigation with the 2010 World Expo in Shanghai, Provoost considers a decade of architecture proposed for China by the profession’s biggest names, many of which have been built now with monumental reputations in rising cities.
“Most ‘starchitects’ had their chance to build, or to fulfill their wildest dreams,” explains Provoost. “Some of them became landmarks: CCTV headquarters by Rem Koolhaas and Ole Scheeren or the Bird’s Nest/National Stadium by Herzog and de Meuron for example. Others have turned a suburb into a new center, or have established a new city on its own.”
British green energy company Ecotricity has revealed plans for a new Zaha Hadid Architects-designed green technology hub in Stroud, England. The project, known as the “Gateway to Stroud,” will consist of several greenhouse-like buildings and a wooden footbridge that will connect the campus to the future all-wood stadium for the Forest Green Rovers football club, also designed by ZHA and revealed late last year.
Planned as a center for local sports and sports science, the ECO park will provide state-of-the-art office space for environmentally-focused companies as well as public access to a wide range of health and leisure activities.
As Zaha Hadid’s 520 West 28th approaches completion, photos of the apartment interiors have been revealed for the first time. Shared by developer Related Companies, the images show two of the building’s first completed residences: the massive 4,500-square-foot Unit 20 and the more modest 1,700-square-foot Unit 12. The two units feature the interior built-ins and finishes designed by Hadid alongside interior design schemes envisioned by Jennifer Post and West Chin, respectively.
Zaha Hadid Architects has collaborated with Samsung and digital art and design collective Universal Everything to create an immersive technology installation at the 2017 Milan Design Week, taking place this week in the Italian city. Named ‘Unconfined,’ the pavilion will showcase Samsung’s new Galaxy S8 smartphone by leading visitors through an immersive environment inspired by the device.
Zaha Hadid's projects are remarkable not only for her innovative way of handling tangible materials but also for her imagination regarding the medium of light. Her theories of fragmentation and fluidity are now well-known design techniques which enabled her form-finding. However, her advances in using light to render her architecture have often been neglected—even though they became an essential element in revealing and interpreting her architecture. The three-decade transition from minimal light lines at her early Vitra Fire Station to the world's tallest atrium at the Leeza SOHO skyscraper, which collects an abundance of daylight, shows the remarkable development of Zaha Hadid’s luminous legacy.
It was in 1988, at London’s Tate Gallery during the Deconstructivism conference held in anticipation of MoMA’s eponymous exhibition that I first encountered Zaha Hadid in person. She was lecturing among her six co-exhibitors: Peter Eisenman, Rem Koolhaas, Frank Gehry, Wolf Prix, Bernard Tschumi, and Daniel Libeskind. I had encountered her work a few years earlier as a young architecture student (at Stuttgart University) and was stunned and thrilled by the unprecedented degrees of compositional freedom, versatility and dynamism in her work. Up until then I had not been so sure if architecture was such a good career choice for me. I was rather underwhelmed and bored by architecture but, through my encounter with Zaha’s incredible work, architectural design unexpectedly transformed into an adventure. The bounds of architectural possibilities had shifted. Thirty years later, this sense of adventure continues. Zaha changed our field and changed everything for me.
A 1,400-foot-tall mixed-use skyscraper by Zaha Hadid Architects may be the next supertall structure to hit midtown Manhattan. Located at 666 Fifth Avenue between 52nd and 53rd Street, the project is the brainchild of Kushner Properties, who currently co-own the existing 483-foot-tall building with Vornado Realty Trust.
Estimated to cost up to $12 billion, the company is currently negotiating a multi-billion dollar deal with Chinese holding company Anbang Insurance Group to finance the project. If plans to buy out the building go through, Kushner would be in the clear to begin construction on the ZHA-designed tower, which would rebrand the property as 660 Fifth Avenue and offer 464,000-square-feet of residential space, an 11-story hotel, and a 9-story retail podium.
Real Estate firm Related Companies has announced the development of 15 new art gallery spaces to be located in and around the base of Zaha Hadid’s 520 West 28th Street residential building, located along the High Line in the New York neighborhood of Chelsea. The acclaimed Paul Kasmin Gallery, currently located in three West Chelsea locations, will serve as the anchor tenant with a 5,000 square-foot gallery in the base of the Hadid-designed building and additional space in the ‘High Line Nine,’ a collection of full service boutique exhibition spaces located adjacent to the building beneath the High Line.
Zaha Hadid Architects has released new images of Leeza SOHO, their mixed-use design in Beijing's Lize Financial Business District. The project is notable for its 190-meter tall atrium, which rises the full height of the building, uniting two twisting sections which contain 172,800 square meters of office and residential space. At the base of the tower, a new transit hub straddles a subway tunnel that is currently under construction.
The UK Holocaust Memorial Foundation and Malcolm Reading Consultants have revealed the designs of 10 teams shortlisted to design a new Holocaust Memorial, to be located in London's Victoria Tower Gardens next to the Houses of Parliament. After a call for expressions of interest was launched in September, 10 star-studded teams were selected in November and invited to submit their designs for an "emotionally powerful and sensitively designed memorial."
With the designs now revealed to the public, competition organizer Malcolm Reading Consultants and the government-led Memorial Foundation are now consulting with the public and are inviting people to submit feedback about the designs here. The feedback received in this consultation period "will play a crucial role in informing the jury’s final decision on the memorial," they explained in a press release. Read on to see all 10 shortlisted designs.
As reported by The Guardian and the Architects' Journal, the last will and testament of the late Zaha Hadid—who passed away in March 2016 aged 65—has revealed that the Dame of the British Empire and Principal of Zaha Hadid Architects had a net fortune of £67,249,458 (around $82.5million or €77million). This sum, which was filed in the UK High Court in December last year, will be bequeathed in small parts to nieces and nephews (£1.7million), her brother Haytham Hadid (£0.5million), and her business partner Patrik Schumacher (£0.5million). At the time of her death, Hadid was unmarried with no children.
This week London's Science Museum will open The Winton Gallery, a new space dedicated to the study and exploration of mathematics, designed by Zaha Hadid Architects. While this is the practice's first permanent public museum exhibition, it also represents the first UK project to open since the death of its eponymous founder and director.
Inspired by the Handley Page aircraft, the design of the space was conceived through observing equations of airflow used in the aviation industry. The layout and lines of the gallery therefore represents the movement of air that would have flowed around this historic aircraft in flight – a metaphor which extends from the positioning of the showcases and benches to the three-dimensional curved surfaces of the central pod structure.
The designs of the Zaha Hadid-created statuettes to be handed out at this year’s BRIT Awards have been unveiled. One of Hadid’s final commissions before her death this March, the design consists of a family of 5 interrelated trophies take the form of abstracted female figures representing diversity. One of those family members, meant to represent Britannia, the female personification of Great Britain, will be awarded to musicians for their victories in the BRIT Awards ceremony this February.
.jpg?1490812427 "MAXXI Museum, 2009, Rome / Italy. Image © Iwan Baan")
