Zaha Hadid Architects have released plans for a 70,000 square meter (750,000 square foot) hotel and residential tower in the Marina District of Lusail City, Qatar. The design is the first of two ZHA projects commissioned by H.H. Sheikh Mohammed Bin Khalifa Al Thani for Lusail City’s integrated community master plan, which when complete will become Qatar’s first and largest sustainable city, providing entertainment, employment and accommodation for up to 450,000 residents and visitors.
Zaha Hadid Architects’ (ZHA) 170-meter-tall Generali Tower has topped out at 44 stories in Milan, Italy. The Generali Tower, along with two other towers, forms the centerpiece for the CityLife masterplan to revitalize the old site of Milan’s International Fair, which closed in 2005.
Through the redevelopment, which began in 2004, the site will be open “to year-round public use, with the inclusion of new civic spaces, public parks, and residential buildings, in addition to shopping areas and corporate offices, all with direct transport connections via the Tre Torri station on the line 5 of the city’s metro system.”
Zaha Hadid’s exhibition design for Kurt Schwitters: Merz opened to the public earlier this week at Galerie Gmurzynska in Zurich. In an article about the exhibition in T Magazine, senior designer and director at Zaha Hadid Architects (ZHA), Patrik Schumacher said, “It’s literally the last project of Zaha, finished by her team.”
The exhibition, presenting seventy works – in all media – from each period of the artist’s career, honors five decades of the gallery showing Schwitter’s work. Hadid’s design is a reflection on the artist’s well-known, but destroyed, Merzbau, a sculpture that filled the artist’s workspace from 1923-1937. According to the Hadid’s office, “[Merzbau was] a living, inhabited collage, ever-shifting and expanding, and this was the starting point for [Zaha’s] exhibition design which pushes beyond mere random collage to embrace the unpredictable richness and the complex variegated order found in nature.” The design builds on an established relationship between Hadid and Galerie Gmurzynska; Merz following in the footsteps of an earlier exhibition space designed for another of the architect’s inspirations, Kasimir Malevich.
The Moinian Group announced that they had been collaborating with the late Zaha Hadid to develop a “visionary” new project for New York City. The project, at 220 Eleventh Avenue in West Chelsea, is a multi-residential apartment building with a cultural institution at street level.
This announcement comes after Zaha Hadid Architects pledged to complete all 36 projects that were in construction or design development at the time of her death, as her office continues her powerful legacy.
In a city as renowned for its historic buildings as Prague, urban change can often be hard to come by – which is why the announcement earlier this month that Zaha Hadid Architects will be designing a large complex of buildings around a railway station close to the city's historic center was big news. But is this the design that Prague needs? In this interview, originally published in Czech by Česká televize, Michaela Polakova speaks to Martin Barry, the Chairman of Prague-based NGO reSITE, for his analysis of how the design will impact the city's future.
Michaela Polakova: What is your opinion on the new Zaha Hadid Architects building in Prague?
Martin Barry: To me, it seems is too early to comment on the aesthetics of the buildings. We should focus on how the collection of buildings enhances the urban character of the city, and how they can improve the urban condition around the buildings. The city is a collection of buildings; the spaces between are what influence people’s lives; not so much the materials and forms of the architecture. That being said, this is a major development site and relatively large footprint of buildings from ZHA adjacent to the historic center of the city. So, we should pay close attention to how the designs develop. At present, it is clear that it is early and they need work.
One Thousand Museum, the Zaha Hadid-designed skyscraper in Downtown Miami, has unveiled new interior renderings, including communal spaces designed by the architect. The 62-story tower, which began construction in December of 2014, will contain only 83 residences, consisting of a two-story duplex penthouse, four townhouses, eight full-floor residences, and 70 half-floor units. Overlooking the Pérez Art Museum by Herzog & deMeuron, the soon-to-be-completed Patricia and Phillip Frost Museum of Science by Grimshaw Architects, and the American Airlines Arena by HOK & Arquitectonica, One Thousand Museum tilts the scales in luxury residences from a market historically centered on Miami Beach to Miami’s rapidly densifying Downtown.
In celebration of the four decade career of the late Zaha Hadid, Fondazione Berengo will host an exhibition of her paintings, drawings, and models at the 16th century Palazzo Franchetti in Venice, coinciding with the 2016 Venice Biennale. The exhibition will display the full range of Hadid's design work from built projects, to those under construction, and others ultimately never realized. Some of the early, unrealized work that will be represented includes Malevich’s Tektonic, a bridge concept for the Thames River, which Hadid developed while she was still a student at the Architectural Association School in London (1976-77), as well Peak Club, Hong Kong (1982-83), Hafenstrasse, Hamburg (1989), Grand Buildings, Trafalgar Square, London (1985), the Victoria City master-plan for Berlin (1988), and the Cardiff Bay Opera House (1994-95).
Heathrow Airport is offering a first glimpse at commissioned expansion proposals by Zaha Hadid Architects, Grimshaw, HOK, and Benoy, that will shape the future of the global hub in London. The project brief called for "bold ideas to create a world-class sustainable airport that [will] deliver innovations in passenger service, integrate local communities, and showcase the best of British design." Challenging the architects to push the boundaries of what is the current airport typology, the proposals are meant to drive a step change in global airport design.
Zaha Hadid Architects (ZHA) has revealed plans to design and redevelop more than 22,000 square meters of brownfield land in Prague, in a 90,000 square meter development adjacent to the city’s Masaryk Railway Station. ZHA was selected by project partner Penta, an investment company active in ten markets across Europe, as the winner of a 2014 competition for the site. Devising a new central business district, the ZHA plan seeks to integrate with existing means of transit, including suburban and domestic rail services, a bus terminal, Line B of the city’s metro, and a future airport rail link to Vaclav Havel International Airport. Approximately one kilometer from Prague’s central square, the design seeks to create a balance between the horizontality of the railway lines and the verticality and publicness of the Old Town.
Zaha Hadid Architects (ZHA) has announced a new project in Moscow, winning a competition to design the Sberbank Technopark at the Skolkovo Innovation Centre. This is the firm’s first announcement of new work since the untimely death of Zaha Hadid late last month. As the market leader of the Russian banking and economic circulatory system since 1841, Sberbank’s new 131,000 square meter facility will accommodate 10,000 to 12,000 workers in the sectors of marketing and information technology.
Zaha Hadid Architects has begun construction on the NürnbergMesse Hall 3C for international exhibition and congress company NürnbergMesse, in Nuremberg, Germany. The design for Hall 3C is a continuation of the design principles from Hall 3A, which was built by Zaha Hadid Architects in 2014.
As a part of the NürnbergMesse exhibition company, Hall 3A connects existing hexagonal grid halls from the 1970s to the rectangular halls at Grosse Strasse. Hall 3C will be modeled in a similar fashion, featuring a trapezoid-shaped and spaning 10,000 square meters.
Zaha Hadid Architects has 36 projects underway in 21 countries, and four of them will be completed this year. The Salerno Maritime Terminal will open later this month, the Port House, Antwerp, in September, the King Abdullah Petroleum Studies and Research Center (KAPSARC) in Riyadh, in October, and the Mathematics Gallery at the Science Museum in London, in December.
In spite of the untimely death of the practice’s namesake last month, the firm has pledged to continue with its slate of projects, stating, “Zaha is in the DNA of Zaha Hadid Architects. She continues to drive and inspire us every day, and we work on as Zaha taught us – with curiosity, integrity, passion and determination.”
Zaha Hadid’s prolific, admired, and influential body of work led to hundreds of invitations to lecture around the world. Through her contemporaries’ heartfelt introductions, we can appreciate her groundbreaking architectural approach in a world which often appeared to be one step behind her ideas and enthusiasm.
Zaha Hadid's sudden passing has led to an outpouring of heartfelt tributes from some of the profession's most prominent figures. A "brave and radical" trailblazer, and the first woman to win the Pritzker Prize, Hadid's significant impact on the world of architecture is undeniable. She will be missed.
"We are all shocked and devastated that we lost Zaha today, a most beautiful individual, talent, leader and friend," Patrik Schumacher, Director of Zaha Hadid Architects, wrote on Facebook.
We will continue to update this link as more tributes come in.
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The China International Exchange Committee for Tall Buildings (CITAB) and the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH) have announced the winners of their inaugural China Tall Building Awards. Four buildings, including two designed by Zaha Hadid and Kengo Kuma, were chosen as China's best tall buildings. Other winners were recognized for their innovation, success within the urban environment, and construction excellence.
"With the support of the Architectural Society of China and the Architectural Society of China Shanghai, the first year of this regionally focused awards program was very successful, with numerous high-quality projects entering into the running under six categories of recognition," said CITAB and CTBUH.
In the latest Tokyo National Stadium news, Kengo Kuma is firing back to Zaha Hadid's allegations regarding the "similarities" of the two designs by insisting that his "concept is completely different." As reported the Architects' Journal, the Japanese architect agrees there are some natural similarities due to appropriate sightlines and regulations, however the actual design and concept are radically different.
"I believe that the design by Zaha Hadid was excellent, with a unique shape and demonstration of her philosophy," said Kuma in a press conference. "When we consider the design is being created within the same land, using the same tracks and under the same laws it is natural and almost automatic that there are some similarities which will arise."
"And despite the technical details being similar, the concepts and designs are completely different," he added, referring to Hadid's "saddle-style" design and his flat-roofed proposal.
Zaha Hadid is facing new hurdles regarding her scrapped Tokyo National Stadium design; according to the architect, the Japan Sport Council (JSC) is withholding an overdue payment until ZHA agrees to relinquish ownership of their original designs.
After working on the design for more than two years, the British practice was decommissioned from the project over cost objections last summer. Since, Japanese architect Kengo Kuma has been reassigned the project, offering a design that ZHA says is suspiciously similar to their original proposal "in the structure, layout and numerous elements."
Now, the JSC has requested ZHA agrees to new "Compliance Rules" that would allow the stadium's new architect to "use any product of work ... regardless of its copyright."
Zaha Hadid Architects has teamed up with Plus Architecture to design their first tower in Melbourne. The 54-story mixed use skyscraper is designed as a series of "stacked vases" supported by an "elegant colonnade of sculptural, curved columns" that "embody and emulate the finest examples of historic architecture" in the area. If approved, the proposal will add a mix of retail, commercial and residential programs to its site at 582-606 Collins Street.
.jpg?1463150672 "The Peak, Hong Kong. Image © Zaha Hadid Architects")
